


Fulcrum

by kviis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Rey, Ben Solo Lives, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Humor, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, References to Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), Rey is going OFF THE GRID, Rose Tico is an important character and we are not leaving her behind, SPOILERS FOR TROS HOLY SHIT, Slow Burn, at this point i gotta add that yeah, but its EXPLICIT this time jj you COWARD, d-o was fun so hes coming too, dont worry guys i can fix this, getting deep in the lore, ill prolly add more tags as things happen, it'll probably get sexy at some point just give me a few chapters, mild abuse of italics, rey takes her Force credit cards and shreds them, we follow canon but make it better, we just dont know where he is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21922648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kviis/pseuds/kviis
Summary: MAJOR TROS SPOILERSRey says fuck you to the galaxy, throws caution to the stars, and sets out on a space adventure to drag her soulmate back to the land of the living.
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 92
Kudos: 190





	1. Unfitting End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Finn express concern. Rey returns to the beginning.

_"Death is just the beginning."_

Rose Tico leaned idly on the hanger bay door, macrofuser in hand, observing the repairs in progress. She had just finished working on the Millenium Falcon, fixing the damage done to it during the Battle of Exegol- as people had begun calling it. It had been a grueling three-day job, and a nearly non-stop one at that. Chewie had done a good chunk of the work since he was familiar with the old ship’s mechanisms, and Poe had rummaged around with them on occasion, often poking at something Chewbacca did _not_ want poked at, and receiving a fair amount of grief for it. He had been well humored about the whole thing and had ultimately left the repairs up to the mechanics.

Rey had helped too, though more infrequently. She would pop on-site to give suggestions or lift something with the Force, and had even gotten elbow deep in the grease herself a few times, but the last Jedi had become more and more elusive in the week after they’d won the war.

Rose was currently watching Rey repair a scuffed-up X-Wing. This was odd because there were vastly more damaged ones she could be working on, and Rose had never known Rey to shy away from fixing ships that resembled scrap metal.

She had a bad feeling about this.

“Hey! I see you’re done helping Chewie with the Falcon.” Rose glanced over her shoulder at Finn, who was approaching with an easy smile.

“We still never cleared up who the assistant was there, actually.”

Finn huffed amusedly, and Rose smiled wryly. Chewie was certainly the expert on the Falcon, but Rose knew more about newer tech, so it had been interesting to balance their masteries of related but different crafts. Who was helping who had become a running joke between her, Finn and Poe. Chewbacca had allowed this to take place, albeit gruffly.

“Hey, Rose?” Finn’s change in tone caught her off-guard. She turned to look up at him.

“Yeah?”

“You think Rey is alright?” Finn had his hands on his hips, and he was looking past her at the aforementioned Jedi, who was still deeply concentrated on the X-Wing. There was a time when this would have felt dismissive, and Rose might have rolled her eyes in exasperation, but she herself had been wondering the same thing, and she knew where she stood with Finn besides. There wasn’t a need to be bothered by Finn and Rey’s friendship when she was just as close to the two of them.

Rose glanced back at the woman repairing the ship.

“I don’t know, Finn.” Her expression grew somber, “She’s been so quiet lately.”

“I mean Rey’s been quiet since she got all Force-y.” Finn made a vague hand gesture to illustrate how Force-y Rey had gotten.

“She wasn’t like that before?”

This seemed to give Finn pause, and he frowned for a moment, “I mean, I didn’t _know_ her for that long before, but… Yeah, I guess she wasn’t.”

“That’s weird, it’s not like _you’ve_ gotten quiet,” Rose pointed out.

Finn grinned, “Thanks for leaving the “ _unfortunately_ ” as subtext.” Rose laughed and shoved his shoulder.

“That’s not what I meant, dummy!”

“Don’t lie, I have the Force, remember?”

“That’s not how the Force _works!_ ”

“How would you know?”

Rose snorted and shook her head. Finn’s smile faded slowly, as his eyes drifted back to Rey. 

Rose sighed, “Yeah, I think something’s up with her,” She shifted to stand beside Finn, nudging his arm with hers. “Go ask.”

“Not sure you can give orders to a General, Commander Tico.” Finn joked, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Rose gave him a sarcastic smile, “Rank doesn’t matter when you’re gonna do what I say anyway.” She patted him on the shoulder as she walked away, off to toss her macrofuser back with the rest of her tools.

Whatever was up with Rey, she was sure it would sort itself out.

* * *

Rey was lucky this ship hadn’t sustained _more_ damage above Exogul, but fixing it still hadn’t been a simple affair. The surface of the wings remained scuffed and bruised, and one of the landing struts needed a good oiling, but it was good enough, and other ships needed repairs far more desperately. It wasn’t as if Rey could steal away the Falcon for a short personal voyage when the Resistance (they hadn’t bothered changing the name yet, even when there wasn’t much left to resist) still needed it.

“Rey, what are you doing?”

She started slightly, despite herself. Sensing people in the Force hadn’t come as naturally to her as if should have been lately. Rey turned to look at Finn, who was standing beside her idling X-Wing, looking up at her with dawning apprehension. She climbed down from where she had been checking over the fighter’s mechanisms and hopped onto the hanger floor.

Gazing into her best friend’s concerned eyes, Rey felt her throat begin to burn. Another goodbye she had been avoiding.

“I need to do something.”

Finn shrugged, “Alright, where are we headed?”

“Finn…”

He stepped closer, bringing a hand up to clasp her shoulder, “Rey, you know you aren’t alone, right?” She took a shuddering breath, but Finn cut her off, “You don’t have to be- just _talk_ to me. _What happened?_ ”

What happened.

“Nothing,” Finn’s eyebrows scrunched in incredulity, “I’m _fine_ , I just need to do this-”

“Rey you have to tell someone what’s wrong!”

Rey blinked. What’s wrong.

“Nothi-”

Finn threw his hands up, “Come on, Rey! I can- I told you about this- I can _feel_ it. There’s something wrong with your-” He struggled for the words. _Bond_ , Rey thought. _Soul, there’s something wrong with my_ \- “Force! Your Force, it’s _off_.”

“It’s not,” She lied.

“Just tell me what’s _going on_ , Rey.”

She could see how much this pained him, not knowing how to help her. Finn was right in front of her, but Rey felt further from him than she had even when they were systems apart. He was right, too. Her Force _was_ off, _she_ was off. Like she’d become unclicked from her place in the galaxy- a piece in some cosmic puzzlebox that had shifted out of place. And no amount of meditation, no sleepless night had been able to slot her broken edges back into alignment.

She was all wrong, everything was. Her life, her family, her fault. _Her fault_.

Sensing Rey’s growing distress, seeing the tears that had been festering in her for weeks, Finn backpedaled, “ _Hey_ , Rey it’s okay-”

“It’s _not_.” She lay a hand on the X-Wing and it powered up.

“Rey, wait-”

But Rey had already pulled away from Finn, was already climbing into the X-Wing, ignoring the protests of her best friend, the worried beeps of BB-8 in their spot behind the cockpit, the desperate ache in her heart.

Rey Palpatine left her new family in the trail of stars behind her ship as she hit lightspeed, and ran all the way back to the beginning. To Tatooine. To an empty desert and an emptier girl.

* * *

There was a haze over Rey as she broke the atmosphere of Luke Skywalker’s home planet. It remained when she landed, and when she buried the two sabers in the sand outside an abandoned hut. Even through what felt like fractured sight, Rey could sense how the Force had pooled in this place, sunken itself into ruts carved by the weight of pending destiny.

When the old woman asked who she was, Rey had looked out into the desert and seen her two Masters, silent and smiling on the horizon. She hadn’t seen Ben. That staggered her for a moment. Ben. She hadn’t said his name, hadn’t _thought_ his name since she screamed it on Exegol, over and over again, until all the screaming in the galaxy couldn’t make her hurt any less.

“I’m Rey.” She answered the woman’s offhand inquiry.

“Rey who?” As though it mattered.

Rey looked back to the ghosts of her recent past. She didn’t see Ben there, on the horizon, shimmering and serene with his family. His family who had loved and lost him.

“Rey Skywalker.” Just like her.

* * *

She curled up in the sand that night, like she had in her early scavenging days, before she had gouged out a place for herself. Is this what the Force had intended? For her to come full circle, right back where she started? But then what had been it’s intention with Ben, her equal, her _dyad_? Rey had considered the future once, in a burning throne room as she stared down at the unconscious body of the man she could now admit she had loved even then. Unable to kill him, unable to turn him, she had left him, and his fate, to the Force.

When Ben had disappeared on Exegol, behind the screaming at the forefront of her mind, had been disbelief. Was the Force so cruel, to make this the fate she’d left him to? To drag himself, figuratively, _literally_ out of the dark abyss that had overtaken him- to claw his way to the light, only to die in its harsh glow. Perhaps the Force _was_ cruel, in all it’s shades.

But then where was he? Ben had died a Jedi’s death, becoming one with the Force and his family, only to hide from her now?

No.

Rey got up and stalked back to her X-Wing, with BB-8 following close behind, beeping inquiries to her about their return to the Resistance. She waved them off and climbed into the fighter, throwing open the satchel she’d left inside. The texts awaited her, humming softly with Force signatures as they always did, touched so they were by countless Jedi before her. She grabbed _Aionomica I_ and _II_ , and on some impulse, _Rammahgon_ as well, though it was more creation myths than Force research. The light of the X-Wing’s dashboard lit the pages as the twin suns melted into the sands of the Tattooine horizon.

The stars faded into the forefront of the sky while Rey read, and now halfway through scanning _Aionomica I_ , she paused as she came to a page on the creation of the Living Force philosophy. _Rammahgon_. There had been something in there about the Living Force, something significant. She replaced the book on her lap with the _Rammahgon_ , and carefully flipped through its wooden pages.

The ancient Coremaic language was near impossible to decipher before she asked C-3PO for help, and it was no easier now that she’d heard the translation. Rey took her own notes from between the pages and looked through them. Writing on paper had been a novel experience, but it had felt fitting somehow. Now, she was glad she'd taken the time to conscribe the translation, as irrelevant as it had seemed over the past year.

The text described several creation myths, none of which interested her specifically, but one did mention something intriguing.

Rey traced over the words, “ _Wellspring of Life_ ”. The gist of the flowery, archaic language was that the Wellspring was a place with great significance to the Living Force, and had been theorized to be the starting place of life itself.

“A Force planet hidden within the Core of the Galaxy...” Rey read aloud, quietly and contemplatively. She had heard that before.

Rey rifled through her satchel for a moment before withdrawing one of the unnamed texts, a book of mostly theorems and diagrams. Flipping past a page of equations given to Padawans, and the solution that had been tacked onto it, Rey came to the section discussing navigation through the Deep Core. There, within the margins was a question posed by some Jedi librarian from centuries past; “ _applicable to search for force planet? meditation required throughout to discern general heading in addition to Thorpe Theorem._ ”

This was the only mention of a Force planet Rey had seen elsewhere. Even through the haze of _offness_ in the Force that surrounded her, Rey could feel a thread of rightness here. The Wellspring was within the Deep Core, containing secrets of the Living Force, containing the answer to the question she hadn’t been able to ask herself.

_Is Ben alive?_

The Living Force was a web of souls, a map of every being in the Universe, and if Ben wasn’t on that map, then Rey would know for certain that he was gone, refusing to show himself to her even as a Force ghost. The idea of that truth hurt _desperately_ , but she needed to know.

Rey placed the texts back into her satchel and swung out of the cockpit of her X-Wing, heading back towards the sand-swept hut that had once housed Luke Skywalker.

Rey didn’t sleep that night, curled up next to a waiting BB-8, within an abandoned home in the Tatooine desert.

She meditated.

When she rose that morning with the twin suns, she did so with a plan.


	2. Preparations Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey lands and then leaves again. The author takes ten minutes to write this summary.

_"Trust in your friends, and they'll have reason to trust in you."_

Rey’s trip back to the Resistance was a blur- of tears, of hope, of time. She hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility that Ben could be alive. Waking up alone every day had become too hollow for the hope of a different tomorrow. 

Even through their year apart, torn across the galaxy by a war neither of them started, Rey had always been aware of him through the pressure of the suppressed bond in the back of her mind. This was not so now. 

Once she had recovered from the initial shock and realized that the haze she’d assumed came with it was there to stay- a symptom of a dyad split apart- Rey had locked herself in her quarters and tried desperately to feel past it. But the static had remained; a pain that sparked constantly like a live wire snapped in half. 

But now, her pumping blood, racing thoughts, blotted out the sting she had become accustomed to.  _ Ben, if you’re there, I’m coming for you _ .

Rey came in too hot on her landing, scorching the hanger floor, and alarming the friends that had gathered once she’d been cleared for landing over the comm. She hardly registered the shoddy flying that would normally embarrass her, she was too caught up in unstrapping and swinging out of the cockpit- and in the flurry of questions that awaited her. Finn muffled them with the smothering hug he gave her once she was on the ground, Rey returned it on habit, surprised out of her anxious trance.

“Hey.” She said, inadequately. 

“You can’t just run off like that.” Finn’s reply was muted by the white wraps over her shoulder, but Rey grimaced all the same. He was right.

“Sorry.”

“You can hug all you want after you explain what, exactly, that was about.” Rey felt Poe clap her on the back, and withdrew from Finn to look over at him.

“What Poe means is that you really worried all of us, Rey.” Rose cut in, soothing the General’s sharp tone, “He was just trying to find a  _ professional  _ way of saying so.” She added, rolling her eyes discreetly.

Poe threw his hands up, “Someone has to act like their rank around here.”

“Don’t I technically outrank you? As a Jedi Master?” 

“You think someone who outranks a General would zip offplanet without the proper paperwork?”

Rey elected not to mention that that’s exactly what Jedi Masters used to do, “It was an errand. And a personal one. Nothing I needed to worry you all with.”

“But you  _ did  _ worry us, Rey.” Finn was frowning at her, clearly still hurt from her hectic departure.

Rey closed her eyes with a sigh, her exhaustion shown clearly in the crease of her brow and her haggard appearance.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

Rose swept forward and tucked her arm into Rey’s, “Tell me about it over caf. You look like you need some.” Poe began to protest but was silenced by a look from Finn, who edged in on Rey’s other side.

“We can get an official report over caf, _ General Dameron. _ ” Rose snarked, gesturing for him to come along as she started walking Rey towards the canteen, with Finn following beside them.

Rey allowed herself the short walk to systematically relax her body, letting her shoulders, chest, hands loosen, preparing herself to pitch her plan to her friends. She’d been so caught up in her nerves, her impatience to begin, that she’d forgotten about the procedures that would need to come before her departure. 

She needed to  _ ideally _ , get approval- it’s not as if Rey wasn’t going to go regardless, it would just make it easier to acquire the next item on the list- supplies. Then she would need to fuel up the Falcon for a long haul trip to the Inner Core, decipher whatever the Thorpe Theorem was so she could navigate the Deep Core, and then meditate to find the Wellspring.

The last one was less of an _ item on a list _ type procedure, and more of a _ deep interpersonal journey _ , but Rey had done those before so she’d just wing it.

All this in mind, Rey was very tuned out when the four of them entered the canteen, and when Rose sat her down and left with Poe to grab them all caf.

It took ten full seconds her Rey to realize Finn was leaning across the table, staring very intently at her. She jumped a bit.

“What?”

Finn nodded absently and rubbed his chin in contemplation, “I’m trying to use the Force to figure out if you’re using the Force.”

Rey smiled a bit, “Am I?”

“Nope. Just really lost in thought.” Finn relaxed back into his seat, and Rey laughed.

“That was great, guys,” Poe dropped a cup of caf off in front of Rey, and sat himself and his own cup down across from her, next to Finn, “Beautiful friendship moment. Rey?”

“Yeah?” She responded, amused.

Poe made a _ get on with it _ gesture, and Rose snorted quietly as she sat down next to Rey.

“Right, yeah.” Rey gulped down some caf to buy time as she considered her words, “So I left to bury the lightsabers.”

“You did  _ what? _ ” Poe sputtered, unfortunately having taken a sip of his own caf.

Finn nodded, “Oh yeah, I noticed they were gone.” Rose tossed Poe a napkin, “Couldn’t, y’know,  _ sense ‘em _ .” Rey grinned at Finn, who wiggled his eyebrows at her.

Rose turned to look at Rey, “So why did you  _ bury  _ two very powerful weapons? That Finn could’ve used, now that I think of it.” 

“Nah, I’m gonna make my own.” Finn waved Rose’s suggestion off. Rey nodded solemnly, they had already discussed this.

“That being fucking said, you still  _ buried _ . Two. Very powerful.  _ Historically significant _ weapons.” Poe had an elbow on the table and was leaning over it in emphasis.

Rey sighed, “They’re not mine to wield. They’re no one’s now.” _ Not unless Ben is still alive _ .

“Well, they’re Luke Skywalker’s and General Organa’s, actually-” “And what does that mean exactly?” Rey interrupted Poe. He looked at her in surprise.

“They both have legacies, yes. But those legacies aren’t mine, they aren’t anyone’s anymore.” Rey’s throat tightened but she spoke around it, “The weight of that burden is the desert’s now.”

The table was silent for a moment, clearly not expecting such a loaded answer. Poe moved on swiftly,

“Desert?”

Rey leaned back into her seat, relieved she wouldn’t be asked to elaborate, “Tattooine.”

“Poetic.” Commented Rose, “What they would have wanted.” Rey grit her teeth behind her lips.  _ Not the point _ . _ Doesn’t matte _ r.

“I need the Falcon,” Rey continued.

“...Why?” Poe drew out the word bemusedly.

“... Jedi stuff.” She figured that was the best way to get a free pass.

Finn perked up, “Awesome, I’m coming.” 

Rey frowned, “Finn,”

“ _ Rey _ ,” He crossed his arms over his chest, “We are  _ not  _ doing this again. I’m coming.”

Poe held up a hand to halt them, “Hey, we haven’t even decided if  _ she’s  _ going yet.” He patted Finn on the shoulder, “Pitch it to the Generals, Master Rey.” Finn chuckled, clearly enjoying the pomp of it all.

Right. Hard part.

“I need to go to the Deep Core to find the Wellspring of Life.”

“Right,” Rose cut in, having been silent to this point, “That last bit again?”

“It’s a planet that holds the secrets of the Living Force.”

“ _ Right _ ,” Rose repeated, “That  _ last  _ bit again?”

“It’s-” “Not relevant, got it,” Poe interrupted her, and Rey took a breath to avoid snapping at him, “Why do you need to go?”

Rey resisted the urge to reply,  _ Jedi stuff, _ “Finn talked to me about this earlier, and he was right- there’s something wrong with my Force signature. And I didn’t want to admit it, but it’s affecting my abilities as well.”

Poe frowned and sipped his caf, “Yeah, that sounds like Jedi stuff,”  _ Told you _ . “You should take Finn,” 

Rey nodded, and Finn leaned forward, “Rose too,” he added, “This is a long journey, and given our luck, we’re probably going to need a mechanic-” Rey opened her mouth, “-One with professional expertise, no offense, Rey.” She shrugged. Fair enough.

“Am I going to be asked to agree to this or anything?” The _ professional  _ mechanic inquired wryly.

“Oh, uh, do you want to-” “Yeah of course I do,” Rose took a swig of caf, “Just wanted to be asked.” Rey smiled, and Finn rolled his eyes.

Poe nodded slowly, “We’re gonna need Chewie around for political reasons- two time war hero and all- so he stays, but you should take a droid along.” He paused to glare superficially over his cup at Rey, “ _ Not _ mine this time.” She pressed her lips together to contain her chided grin.

“We can take D-0,” Rey suggested.

Finn rapped his knuckles on the table, “Approved. Mission set for launch,” He turned to look at Poe, “General.”

Poe nodded with false solemnity, “General.”

“Court adjourned,” added Rose, banging her cup on the table as a mock-gavel. 

Rey let out a relieved breath. Step one complete.

* * *

Chewie was less than pleased about the Falcon being taken on a perilous cross-galaxy adventure right after he and Rose had finished the repairs from the last one, but since it was Rey flying, he trusted her to get it back in one-  _ functional-  _ piece.

Rey took the box of tools from his hands and floated it up the ramp and into the arms of Rose, who took it inside the ship. Finn was collecting tools from the recently finished repairs by calling them to his hands with the Force and placing them in their box. Rey gave him an encouraging nod as she hoisted a heavy duffel of clothes onto her shoulder, and headed up into the Falcon. D-0 skidded around a corner, droning out a monotone “ _ Hi, Rey _ .” before zipping away to follow Rose into the cargo bay.

Rey dropped off the duffel in the ship’s main sleeping chambers. Their logic was that since it was Rey’s mission, and she had the most stuff (although the only extra things she was bringing were the Jedi texts and her lightsaber) she would get the main bed, while Finn and Rose would sleep in one of the triple bunk rooms.

Rey had wondered if the two of them had ulterior motives, and ultimately decided it didn’t really matter. Whether they wanted to be alone together or they wanted to give her space, she had the main bunk and she was grateful for it. Rey hadn’t really been the most peaceful sleeper recently.

Her dreams were a muddled affair of loss and longing, and she often woke from them with a gasp of something embarrassing like “ _ No _ ”, “ _ Come back _ ”, or “ _ Don’t leave me _ ”. Pretty much any variation of the things she’d screamed after Ben faded into the Force.

She didn’t like to ruminate on the contents of them.

Rey had never been afraid of the darkness before she’d known her blood was so rife with it.

“Rey! We’re all packed up, just waiting on our pilot!”

Finn’s voice broke through her thoughts, thankfully, and Rey hastily wiped a hand over her face before hurrying out of the room. She’d hardly even noticed the burn in her eyes and didn’t want to leave any tears she may have shed unknowingly. Finn didn’t need to know about her doubts, he knew enough. She’d been so scared to tell him about Palpatine, scared that he wouldn’t understand, that he’d leave her. His nonchalant acceptance had been a balm to the hounding anxiety that had followed Rey.

But no one could know how deeply she had swayed from the pristine path of a Jedi. How she’d seen herself reflected darkly in Kylo Ren’s eyes. 

And Ben Solo’s, just before she kissed him. 

Oh, Rey could never bring herself to feel shame for that, but she knew the Resistance, knew how they saw her. Not as a woman, but as a legend. A new Luke Skywalker.

She wondered somberly, as she strode down the ramp to meet Finn and the rest, if he could forgive her for falling in love with her most cherished enemy.

“Right,” Rose began, as Rey came to stand beside her, “Now that everyone’s outside the ship, we can go back in and leave.”

Finn elbowed her and stepped forward to embrace Poe with one hand, reaching out with the other to make a ‘ _ c’mere _ ’ gesture. Rey acquiesced and gently folded herself into the hug, vaguely aware of Poe trying to wave over Rose, who simply patted his back.

A soft roar caused Rey to pull away and turn to Chewbacca. She gave him a teary smile, and he enveloped her in a crushing hug.

“I’ll bring her back in one piece, don’t worry.” Rey murmured into Chewie’s fur.

He rumbled back at her, “ _ That’s not what I’m worried about.” _

Rey squeezed him again and pulled away, “I’ll be fine.” She said, as if she knew. If Ben wasn’t alive, Rey doubted she would ever be  _ fine  _ again.

Their goodbyes came to a close and Rose, Finn and Rey boarded the Falcon. Rose complained about the whole affair taking too long the entire five minutes it took them to get offplanet.

Rey sat in the pilot chair, staring at the rush of blue and white outside the viewport. She had set course for Barlok, a forested planet that would serve as a rest stop for refueling. This would be the longest set of jumps of the journey, since they were going from the Outer Rim planet Ajan Kloss- the current base of the former Resistance- to the edge of the Inner Rim. From there on to the Deep Core planet Vulpter, and finally the Wellspring.

The location of which was completely unknown to her.

Rey rubbed between her eyes. The majority of this trip was going to be spent studying the Thorpe Theorem and its solution. And once she was within the Deep Core… meditation.

Finn plopped into the copilot’s seat, having finished helping Rose do a last-minute check of the power converters. He didn’t know the most about ships, so Rey figured he had just wanted to talk to Rose. Or bother her. Likely both.

Rey looked over at him from where she had finished plotting their course. He smiled warmly and reached a fist over to her. She bumped it with her own.

As much as her friends didn’t know, at least she wasn’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the lack of action, this chapter was just to get everyone in the right spot. Next time on Fulcrum!: the gang journeys and Rey dreams.
> 
> Also: thank y'all for the comments and encouragement!!! I don't know how long exactly this whole thing is going to be, but I do have a plan and a set ending. Also please feel free to criticize me, and point out typos or whatever.


	3. Regret Repeated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Rey talk about holodramas until Rey gets so bored she falls asleep.

_"The first step to correcting a mistake is patience."_

Rey was tapping through a holopad in the cockpit, researching the planet Barlok when Rose walked in. She didn’t notice until the other woman took a seat in the copilot’s chair, looking pointedly in Rey’s direction.

Rey paused before looking up. She had been spared a real interrogation by their haste to leave, but she had known it was only a matter of time.

“...Yes?”

One of the things Rey liked about Rose was that she got straight to the point.

“There’s something you’re not telling us.”

By ‘us’, it was probably fair to say she had been the subject of Rose and Finn’s conversation when they were checking on the Falcon together earlier.

Rey gave Rose a long look and wondered if Finn had told her about Palpatine.

“And Finn doesn’t know either, so it’s not about Palpatine.”

Rey blinked. So he had. It didn’t _really_ bother her, she was going to tell Rose eventually anyway. She set down the holopad and curled her legs up onto her seat. She just wished Finn had talked to her about it first.

“He told you.” Stating the obvious was always a good way to stall for time.

“Yeah. Listen, Rey, we’re closer than we were after Crait, right?”

Rey nodded, and Rose sighed.

“You have to know you can tell me anything.”

Rey’s throat worked against the burning in the back of it. She _didn’t_ know that. After all the First Order had taken from Rose- _and_ Finn, how could she tell them about Ben, who had been its leader?

“There’s nothing to tell,” Rose gave her a pointed look, and Rey felt indignation rise in her, “Did Finn put you up to this?”

That caught Rose off guard and she blinked in surprise before crossing her arms defensively, “We’re your _friends_ , Rey, we’re allowed to worry about you.”

Rey took a deep breath. Her emotions had been in turmoil since… since everything, and it was a struggle to not let them overwhelm her. She wanted to shout at Rose, to deflect her friends’ concern with her own anger. Rey gripped the armrest at her side, trying to recall Leia’s training.

“I know,” She bit out, “that you’re worried.” Rose watched her with waning patience, “But there’s nothing either of you can do.”

The other woman threw her hands up, “Because you won’t give us the chance!”

Rey clenched her teeth and brought a hand up to rub at her temple. She could feel the beginnings of a headache already forming. Rey had no idea how Ben had managed so long just _repressing_ everything. _Though he didn’t exactly repress his anger_ , she considered wryly.

“I can’t-” Rey raked a hand through her hair, mussing her tidy three buns, “I can’t talk about this right now, Rose.”

Rose sat back in her chair heavily, and Rey looked up to see her friend staring at the spiral of stars outside the viewport, clearly upset.

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready.” She promised, quietly. Rose nodded, but Rey could tell she wasn’t satisfied. _Well, neither am I_ , the Jedi thought bitterly.

The pair sat in silence for a lingering moment, before Rey spoke up, eager to clear the air of the hurt that hung around them.

“Are my problems the only thing you and Finn talked about?” She was fully aware her joke fell flat, but Rose smiled sardonically anyway.

“Only mostly. He did try and help check for problems.,” Rose shook her head amusedly, “gave some suggestions. Poe’s influence, most likely.”

There was a hint of something resigned in Rose’s tone and Rey frowned, “I can’t imagine they were _safe_ suggestions.” Poe was a fantastic pilot, but _not_ a mechanic.

Rose laughed, “Most of it was theoretical, the practical parts were clearly not from Poe.”

“Sounds like _your_ influence, then.” Rey pointed out, relieved that they were both relaxing into this topic.

Rose scoffed, “You think he listens to me when I word-vomit about ships?”

“I think he listens to you in general,” Rey turned back to her datapad and began scrolling through holonet articles on Barlok. She felt Rose’s doubtful gaze weigh on her bent head, “You just don’t notice through the- the vomit.” Rey chuckled.

Finn and Rose’s relationship could often be summed up as being mutually enraptured by each other, while simultaneously being completely ignorant to that mutuality. Rey appreciated the endless distraction from her own relationship issues… If what she and Ben had counted as a relationship. It was honestly very confusing that they had never gotten around to defining it. Rey frowned down at the holopad, blind to its contents. _He’d fucking better be alive so I can ask him what the hell we are_. 

She crushed down the familiar pain of remembering Ben in favor of a prickling irritation at the man himself.

“Hey, Rose?”

“Hm?” Rose appeared to have retired to reading through the schematics Chewie had given her, eager to ignore the implications of Rey’s earlier statement.

“What does it mean when someone ‘offers you their hand’?”

The holopad containing Rose’s schematics clacked against the control panel from which it had been held aloft, “Uh.” She replied, eloquently, “What's the context?”

Rey blinked. What _was_ the context?

“An argument?”

Rose turned to Rey apprehensively, “And this is from personal experience?”

Rey waved off the question with an anxious hand movement, “No, a holodrama I was watching.”

“You watch _holodramas_?”

Rey fixed her with a frustrated look, “Just answer the question.”

Rose chuckled bemusedly, “It sounds like a marriage proposal? I mean, the way you _phrased_ it does.”

This staggered Rey. That was how Ben had phrased it, right? _“I offered you my hand once._ ”, he’d said, looming on the other side of the bond with aggravating elegance, even in that stupid mask. At the moment, she had only remembered his pledge to rule the galaxy, not the plea that had softened his offer. Rey found herself going over their interactions after that moment rapidly. The liquid tension that had strung together their bond, the longing she’d felt for how Ben had been before the Supremacy- gentle and patient, and then fierce and protective. Had that longing been mirrored in him?

“Intense holodrama, huh?” Rose interrupted her line of thought, likely taking Rey’s prolonged silence to mean she was internally breaking down the plot of this imaginary drama.

“Yeah,” Rey replied. She wasn’t _wrong_.

If only she’d had more time with Ben. Maybe they could have sorted things out without everything else falling apart. Not for the first time, Rey allowed herself a moment of weakness to wish she’d taken Ben’s hand. Or at least offered her own.

Rey closed her eyes tightly, staving off the urge to think through every possibility, every action that might have given them more time. Every way she could have avoided wasting what precious little time they _did_ have. She had tortured herself with hypotheticals enough to know it led nowhere, fixed nothing.

Rey was doing her best to fix things now, that was what was important. What she had to focus on. 

She stared out the viewport. The stars that raced past appeared to meld together when in reality they were millions of miles apart.

Rey remained in the cockpit with Rose for a long time, allowing the lights to lull her, until her eyes fell closed and she slept.

* * *

Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing skidded to the ground on the surface of Exegol, sliding to a stop not far from the entrance to Palpatine’s lair. Rey, haggard and desperate, scrambled from the cockpit and clambered down the side of the ship. She shook ran up to the gaping hole in the planet’s surface.

There wasn’t enough time to wait for the platform. Rey jumped.

The Force eased her descent, but she still landed hard on the massive chain that hung from the ceiling of the cavern. Rey stifled a grunt of pain and gripped the jagged stone, the skin of her hands splitting against it. Used to clambering down from large structures, Rey made short work of scrambling down the chain.

As soon as she dropped to the ground, she started sprinting for the entrance to the arena. _I’m coming, Ben._ Rey disappeared into the slit in the wall, backlit by the flash of lightning from within. The passage was short, but every step it felt like the walls pressed tighter to her body.

Once through, she saw Ben in the distance, cold and still on the ground beneath Palpatine’s empty throne. Her heart dropped to her stomach, and Rey nearly fell in her haste to run across the expanse. Every step seemed to weigh more, the muscles in her legs already screaming from her hasty descent.

She dropped to her knees once she reached him, uncaring of the bruises that had already formed there, and lay a shaking hand over his neck. Nothing.

Rey let out a gasping sob, and grabbed under Ben’s arms, hoisting him up onto her lap.

“Ben!” she cried, wiping a trembling hand over the smear of blood on his cheek. The cuts on her fingers left more behind, “No, _no_. You can’t leave me alone again.”

She looked around, but there was no one. No ghosts of the past to help her.

It was just her. Just them.

Rey lay her shaking hands on either side of Ben’s still face, and lowered her forehead to rest against his. _Come back. Come back to me._

_Please_.

_Please, Ben!_

“Rey?”

Her eyes flew open and staring back up at her was Ben Solo, his bloodied face filled with disbelieving wonder. Rey began crying in earnest. 

“Ben,” her voice broke, and she dragged him up to her, clutching him tightly as if any moment he would disappear. Ben returned her embrace weakly. Rey rocked, burrowing her face into his neck, “I did it, I’ve got you.” _I’m never letting you go again_ , was left unspoken.

“Sweetheart…” Ben’s voice was hardly a whisper it was so quiet. She needed to hurry. He needed help.

“I’ve got you. I’m getting you out of here, I’m going to save you.” Rey pulled Ben’s arm over her shoulder and stood, legs shaking under his added weight, “I’m going to save you this time, I _promise_.”

She began shuffling back towards the exit, Ben stumbling along beside her, murmuring softly in her ear. All she could make out was her name, over and over again. Waiting for the platform was agonizing, but Rey would never be able to climb out and carry him with her, weak as she was now.

Once they were back at the X-Wing, Rey used the Force to gently lift Ben into the seat. Se climbed up and huddled between his bent legs. He was still breathing quietly behind her, and Rey let out a relieved sob when one of his arms wrapped around her waist. She fired up the X-Wing.

As they cleared the atmosphere, she felt Ben press a gentle kiss to the curve of her shoulder. Her chest felt tight with tentative joy. Then the arm around her waist slid away.

“Ben?” Rey glanced behind her.

The seat was empty. 

Ben was gone.

“ _No!_ ” She screamed, looking around desperately, “No, please!”

He was gone _again_.

“No, no, no!”

 _I have to go back_ . Rey jerked the controls and her ship spun around in a tight circle, sending her racing back the way she came. _I can’t leave him_. 

Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing skidded to the ground on the surface of Exegol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY....  
> if you didn't catch it, Rey's dream is repeating. its Sisyphian, baby!  
> Also, there's a little reference in here to one of my favorite authors- Leigh Bardugo- see if you can catch it. It's basically a paraphrase of something she wrote that really Got me.  
> Sorry this was so short- it's just an interlude that develops a few things.  
> Next time- we arrive at Barlok.


	4. Treating Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang lands on Barlok and Rey gets some real goddamn food.

_ "Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction." _

Barlok, while not a center of commerce like Coruscant, still maintained a place in the galactic economy through exports from its mines. Because of this, it did have several prominent cities, the largest of which Rey had booked a landing pad in.

The Falcon touched down in the heart of the Patameene district, a busy hub of activity within Barlok’s capital city. Rey, Finn, and Rose exited the Falcon with apprehension. The First Order was dead, but it’s lingering supporters were still a danger to them, and flying the Millenium Falcon wasn’t the most discreet method of transport. Now, with the modest city looming around them, the group was all the more aware of how conspicuous they were. 

Rey had considered this and had changed into her old grey vest and some deep blue pants she had acquired recently. Her saber was concealed at her side by the billowing brown cloak she wore to keep back the slight chill. Rey glanced around, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She had worn it half-up instead of in her signature three buns at the suggestion of Finn. Her face had appeared in quite a few Resistance recruitment holos and though it would bring some perks, she wasn’t prepared for the citizens of Barlok to recognize her as the last Jedi.

Finn and Rose were Resistance heroes as well, but Rose had waved off a cloak for a more practical hooded jacket. Finn had happily accepted one, and Rey had grinned at the pair they made- two robed Force-sensitives, much like the Jedi of the Old Republic.

She almost felt old-fashioned walking into the modern fuel station, even if nothing in this city was as up to date as other Inner Core worlds with more stake in the economy. 

Rey nudged Finn as the three of them walked up to one of the attendants that manned a counter. He glanced at her curiously and she gave him a look that conveyed a cheeky “ _ watch this _ ”.

Mind-tricking a dull-eyed humanoid into giving them a frankly ridiculous discount was practically second nature after a long year of pinching credits in the Resistance. Leia had her treasuries, but they weren’t nearly as excessive after building up their ranks in the shadows of the New Republic. Leia had never approved of Rey’s methods of saving, but she’d never forbade it either.

And Rey was a scavenger at heart. She’d take what she could get, however she could get it.

Finn watched behind her, noting the commanding tone she took on, the gentle wave of her hand. Learning was done best by doing, but Rey knew firsthand the value of observation. Even if Finn didn’t have a latent Force dyad to assist him.

Rose was less enthusiastic, but certainly not less practical.

“I will charge you half-price for your fuel,” The attendant repeated dutifully, “I will forget the make and model of your ship. I will forget your faces.”

Perhaps that was excessive, but Rey wasn’t about to take risks on anyone tracking the movements of her infamous ship- at least in any official capacity. She could hardly mind-trick everyone who wandered by the Falcon. 

Rose stepped up and smiled at the attendant, passing her a few credits, “Thank you.”

She blinked out of her trance, “It’s against company policy to take tips-”

“No it’s not,” said Rose, still smiling as she elbowed Rey.

“No it’s not,” Rey acquiesced, threading the Force into her words.

“Oh, no it’s not!” The attendant pocketed the credits enthusiastically. 

As they walked away, Rey gave Rose a questioning look. 

The shorter woman grimaced, “They hardly pay those attendants anything. It’s what happens in places where they haven’t replaced sentient workers with droids.”

“Huh.” Rey hadn't considered that.

* * *

The three of them hadn’t eaten anything but ration packets for lunch, and though Rey would be fine with this, Rose and Finn weren’t, so they wandered through the Patameene district in search of a quick meal. 

That’s how they all ended up in  _ Panky’s _ , a popular diner not far from where they’d set down the Falcon. Refueling wouldn’t take long, but Rey had booked their pad for a few hours just in case, so they had plenty of time.

Once inside, the three of them sat down at one of the booths, Rey on one side and Rose and Finn sidling into the other. A WA-2 waitress droid rolled over to them squeakily, and Rey eyed its outdated model with skepticism. 

“Could we get some bribb juice for the table please?” asked Rose, who had already looked over the menu.

“What’s bribb juice?” Rey asked, turning from her scrutiny of the WA-2 to look at Rose, who shrugged.

“Right away,” droned the waitress droid, who promptly wheeled back behind the bar. The three of them watched anxiously as if expecting it to tumble apart at any moment.

“The wiring on that droid looked a little…”

“Shit?” offered Finn, and Rey nodded with a grimace.

“It’s probably been around for a long time,” remarked Rose, “This place is cheap- more likely to repair than to replace.”

“Looks like they ought to hire a new mechanic.”

The droid brought them their drinks, which upon tasting were actually quite good. Rey glanced at the menu and ordered the first thing she saw- prisht fruit salad. She had no idea what a prisht fruit was, but she had always enjoyed fruit, and food was food anyway. Finn ordered the fral and Rose asked for a plate of tarsh maxers, which she claimed were very good wherever you got them.

The droid left again and Rey sat back, surveying the diner. There were a couple of other patrons, all of them occupied with their own food and conversations. She leaned forward and gestured to Finn.

“Okay, the first thing you need to know about sensing intentions-”

“Oh, I know how to do that.”

Rey blinked. Right, that was a pretty instinctual Force power. Rose crossed her arms and watched the two of them with amusement.

“Okay, well mind probes aren’t so let's start with that.”

Finn looked alarmed. “Wait, wait isn’t that super painful and invasive?”

Rey shook her head. “Not if you don’t look too deep. And if your target doesn’t resist.” She gestured around the diner, “Feeling any Force-sensitives in here?”

“No.”

“Good, so no one would notice enough to resist. A little probing won’t cause pain.”

“Cause that makes it ethically sound,” Rose remarked wryly.

Finn gave her a look, and she shrugged. “I’m just saying it doesn’t sound like the most  _ Jedi  _ thing to do.

Rey winced. “The Jedi weren’t always ethically sound...”

“And what, you’ll continue that tradition?”

Rey was silent as she attempted to tamp down the spike of anger that flared in her. It wasn’t as if carrying the legacy of the Jedi was  _ easy _ . Not along with the legacy of… well.

Maybe  _ Jedi things  _ weren’t in her nature.

“Rose, give her a break.” Finn jumped in, trying to diffuse the growing tension.

Rose looked chided. “I’m sorry, Rey I didn’t mean to upset you- I’m trying to understand.”

_ You  _ can’t  _ understand _ , something in Rey snarled back, but she clenched her teeth around the words.

“It’s fine. You’re  _ right _ , but maybe let’s reform the Jedi religion later?” She rubbed at her temples, feeling fatigued.

Their food arrived and there was a long minute of silence while they all tried it. Finn took an interest in Rose’s dish, which was roasted and smelled incredible. She forked a piece over to him, and soon they were all sampling each other’s food. Rey felt her mood lift as the three of them laughed together. Even without Ben, even with this massive hole in her heart… she still had people. She wasn’t alone. Rey swallowed down the ache rising in her throat. But would it be enough? 

If she never found Ben, if he was really-  _ gone _ , would she be able to move on? To love someone like that again. Even as she considered it, Rey knew the answer was no. There was no replacement for a dyad. Now that she knew what it was to be complete, nothing else would ever come close. She didn’t want a relationship where there was always something missing. Even thinking of being with someone else felt wrong- like a betrayal of Ben... but most of all a betrayal of  _ herself _ .

Rey would never want anyone else. Forcing herself to try was too painful to contemplate.

“So,” Finn started, around a mouthful of Rey’s salad. It had taken everything in her not to stab at him with her fork when he’d snagged a piece. Some instincts were hard to shake, “About mind probes?”

“Right.” Rey nodded to herself, considering how to phrase things. It was difficult to put what had always been a  _ feeling  _ into words. She glanced around for a target. Sitting at the bar was a middle-aged Twi’lek, whom she subtly pointed out.

“Them. What are they thinking of ordering?”

Finn looked for a moment, before turning back to her. “You haven’t explained anything.”

Rey gave her best Luke Skywalker impression and looked at him solemnly. “Use your instincts.”

He rolled his eyes. “Such  _ wisdom _ .”

Rose laughed and elbowed him. “Don’t talk back to Master Rey!”

“I’m  _ not  _ gonna call her that if she isn’t going to help.”

“Don’t call me that  _ period _ .”

Finn waved her off and looked back at the Twi-lek, concentrating. He frowned intensely.

“Try to look less like your food is disagreeing with your stomach?” Rose suggested, and he flapped a hand at her.

“ _ I’m trying to focus _ .”

There was a moment of silence before Finn slammed his palm down on the table and exclaimed, “ _ Corellian noale! _ ”

“Correct!” Rey yelled back, ignoring Rose who was trying to shush the both of them.

A couple of people in the diner looked at them oddly, but the only other consequence was a waitress droid coming over with a Corellian noale- which turned out to be a strong drink- for Finn. He hadn’t alerted the Twi-lek to his intrusion.

Rey high-fived him over the table, and they all dug back into their food, making conversation about random things they’d heard about Barlok. This time, as an apology for breaking into one of the patrons' minds, Rey paid full price.

* * *

Once they were back at the Falcon- now fully fueled- Rose and Finn insisted on starting the next jump themselves, so that they’d be more independent of Rey in future missions. Or at least that was their excuse. Rey was too tired to complain, and simply shrugged and headed back to her quarters.

They hadn’t done anything particularly taxing, but Rey had a sinking suspicion that her fatigue had more to do with her use of the Force than her physical excursions. The thought was alarming. Simple mind tricks had never drained her before. Something in her was slipping, and Rey could sense that it would only get worse.

With her mind muddled by these anxieties, Rey collapsed into her bed and fell deep into a troubled sleep.

Rey jerked awake, disorientated. She was cold and tired,  _ so tired _ , and as she blinked away the blurriness in her vision, the face of Ben Solo came into focus above her. She gasped, grabbing at the strong arms that cradled her.

“Ben!”

Ben blinked down at her in relief.

“Rey.” He stroked her cheek with a shaking hand. “ _ Rey- _ ”

“You’re alive!” She sobbed, and grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragging him down so his lips crashed clumsily into hers. Ben stiffened and Rey nearly pulled away, afraid that he would collapse, that history would repeat itself again- but instead, she felt relieved as a muscled arm looped around her waist and jerked her closer. Ben's mouth opened against hers, deepening the kiss.

Elated, Rey moved against him desperately, pushing one hand into his hair and grasped at his shoulder with the other, afraid that he would fade under her touch at any moment. Ben let out a shuddering gasp as she sank her teeth into his bottom lip. She shifted in his lap, pressing herself even closer, unable to get close  _ enough _ .

Ben pushed her back slightly, and Rey nearly cried out in frustration but halted when she saw the expression on his face.

His eyes were full of tears and longing, and he held her face so delicately, tracing over her lips, her cheeks, her brow, as if he was putting to memory how she felt under his hands. And he was whispering,

“ _ Rey _ . Force, thank you, thank you.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “If there’s one thing I can keep, _ please  _ let it be this.” He kissed her cheek and buried his face into her neck. “ _ Fuck, I don’t deserve this. _ ”

He thought she was a vision, “Ben?”

“Yes,” he spoke against her neck, pressing a kiss there. Rey let her head fall back, and Ben followed the line of her throat down to her collarbones.

“Are you alive?”

He froze. She felt his shuddering breath fan over her sternum. One of his hands still clutching her waist tightened. Ben’s face pressed closer into the curve of her shoulder as if he was afraid to see her face.

“No,” he said, resigned. “I’m not. I can’t be.” 

Rey clutched him to her chest and screamed in rage and anguish as her dream collapsed around her and Ben Solo disappeared once again.

* * *

Rey lay in bed for hours after waking, curled on her side, staring into the shadows of the captain’s quarters. The void inside her where Ben had been felt like a torn open wound. Seeing him again, outside of her fevered nightmares… it had been painful, but only in the way treating a bleeding gash was. To hear him say that he was dead… 

Once, Rey had fallen from the side of a Star Destroyer and impaled her arm on the dilapidated spire of some mechanism jutting from the sand. The wound was agony to bind and to work around, but she had done it. And then in a haze of hunger when she had been unable to afford portions, Rey’s bandages had been caught on a snag of wiring as she climbed, and had torn the cloth from where it had matted to the wound in her neglect to change it. She had nearly fallen to her death when her vision went black from the pain. 

That was what she felt now, clinging to the side of the upturned hanger of a fallen ship, unable to climb further, unable to get down, always bleeding.

Rey shut her eyes for a moment. But she had gotten down, eventually. And she’d survived.

She swung her legs over the side of the ben and sat there for a moment, rubbing the sleep and tears from her eyes. If Ben was gone…

No. It didn’t make sense. If he was dead, why hadn’t she seen him, softly glowing beside his family, backlit by the twin suns of Tattooine? She had spoken to him in her dream, the  _ real  _ him, not a phantom of her broken heart. And he thought he was dead.

Rey let out a rattling sob. Did Ben think the Force had rejected him? Left him to rot in the place he had died? She remembered what he had said, “ _ If there’s one thing I can keep,  _ please  _ let it be this. _ ” He thought she had been a dream, something he’d been sent a vision of out of pity. Rey held a shaking hand to her mouth to stifle another sob.  _ This  _ was a new kind of pain, knowing that Ben thought he was alone, that he was unworthy of being anything but. 

He could be alive, somewhere, but he was hardly living.

Rey glared down at her lap. If he wasn’t dead, where had he gone? His body wasn’t on Exegol, she  _ knew  _ it wasn’t.  _ Why had he gone where she couldn’t follow? _

Rey stood and began winding through the narrow halls to the cockpit. The Wellspring would have answers, she could  _ feel  _ it.

A few more jumps and one more planet until she could begin searching, meditating on its location.

The next time she dreamed of Ben, Rey would tell him she was coming- she would  _ make  _ him believe she was real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... sorry to hurt y'all again, but hey I made it better! kind of?  
> I have to say, researching Barlok on wookiepedia was a whole trip. Panky's is a real diner there that Anakin visited at one point- and he ordered bribb juice! I was very excited that the article mentioned a dish with fruit in it because it's my life goal to give Rey as much fruit as I possibly can.  
> Next time- more space road trip! And Rey finally asks what the fuck is going on with Finn and Rose! Will Ben be there too? Maybe!


	5. Respite and Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey experiences the frustration of being the middle man.

_"He who seeks to control fate shall never find peace."_

“Are you sure you’re not using the Force?”

Finn frowned at Rey from across their third game of holochess.

“You _know_ I’m not. It’s not my fault you’re so impulsive.”

Rey sputtered, “I’m a _Jedi_ , the last thing I am is impulsive!”

Both of them were startled by the bark of laughter Rose let out from where she was fiddling with the technical station across the room. Finn stifled a snort behind his hand when Rey turned back to glare at him.

He pursed his lips to contain his grin, and leaned over the flickering characters on the board, “Look, you have to think a few moves ahead, if you don’t then you’re gonna play yourself into a corner.”

Rey set her shoulders stubbornly, “I’m trusting my instincts.”

“You should really _stop_ ,” Finn muttered.

In retaliation, Rey angrily stabbed at a button, sending her final piece forward. Finn sighed, and pressed one on his own side, destroying her piece and winning the game. Rey groaned in frustration and sunk back into her chair.

“Hey, don’t feel bad, I had to train in strategy growing up.”

Something beeped loudly across the room and Rose swore in Hutteese.

“Please don’t break the ship!” Rey called after her and she hurried out of the room. 

Finn watched her go, surprised, “Rose doesn’t make mechanical mistakes often.”

Rey shrugged, “She’s distracted.”

“Rose? How can you tell?”

She gave him a look, and Finn’s mouth opened in a silent, “ _oh_ ”.

It wasn’t as though Rey had been searching Rose’s mind, but her energy in the Force had been almost erratic lately. Frustrated somehow. Finn stared at the hall Rose had run off into.

“Do you think she’s…” Finn grimaced, “Nevermind.”

“Finn.” Rey said, and the unasked question hung between them. _What do you know that you aren’t saying?_ Because of course Finn knew _something_. He’d been spending so much time with Rose, he certainly knew her better than Rey did.

Finn rubbed the space between his eyes, “I feel like she’s mad at me.”

Rey assessed him for a long moment. She’d been paying attention to Finn and Rose’s relationship only in passing, not really taking the time to look deeply into it. There had been so much else on her mind lately. 

“I don’t think that’s exactly it.”

Finn threw a hand up, “Then what is it! I know I was distant before, but the war was coming to a head, I didn’t have _time_.”

“And now you do.”

“Right! So I’ve been spending more time with her, but she won’t tell me what’s up!”

Rey opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what she should say. It wasn’t as though she was some expert on relationships, hers had hardly gone the way she’d wanted it to.

“I don’t know, talk to her?” She shrugged in exasperation, “We should really be focussing on the mission anyway.”

Finn glanced away, appearing distressed, “Can you… talk to her for me?”

Rey put her head in her hands, “Finn I am not going to be a messenger for you two.”

“Just ask her what’s going on!”

“Ask her yourself!”

* * *

Rey leaned against the entrance to the engineering station.

“So,” she began, awkwardly, “What’s going on?”

Rose, didn’t stand up, simply glancing over briefly from where she was elbow deep in the shield generator, “The attachment pieces aren’t conducting the maximum power load. I was trying to splice in an upgrade, but I… made an error.” She nearly growled the last part, clearly unhappy to admit she had messed up.

Rey nodded slowly, “It caused a power surge?”

“Yeah. Frayed the circuits a bit.”

Rey came closer to examine the open panel of one of the attachment pieces situated between two generators, “Well they don’t need to be replaced.”

Rose extracted her hands to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow, “I know, I just don’t have a delicate enough tool on hand.”

Rey used the Force to call her fusing pen to her from the nearby toolkit, “Here,” She began fiddling with the mechanism from the outside, mentally casting about within the small tool to adjust the beam strength, “I turned down the intensity of the laser, this should work.” She handed the modified fusing pen to Rose, who turned it on to examine the beam.

Nodding, Rose muttered a distracted “ _thank you_ ” and leaned back over the attachment piece.

Rey paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. _How did I let Finn rope me into this…_

“Y’know, when I asked what was going on…”

“Finn sent you, didn’t he.” Rose sighed, glowering at the circuit she was fixing, from frustration at Finn or at the circuit, Rey wasn’t sure.

“Sometimes I wonder if all my friends have the Force,” Rey muttered.

Rose straightened and put her hands at her hips, still staring down at the generator, “Finn’s better at emotions than you are. I figured you wouldn’t volunteer.”

Rey bristled, “If he’s so _good at emotions_ , he should’ve talked to you himself.” 

“Never said he was good at his own emotions.”

Rey considered that Rose might be the only one of them who was good at her own emotions. She envied how the woman always seemed to know how she felt about things when Rey was the last to know how she _herself_ felt. Compartmentalizing seemed to run in Force users. Perhaps that was another flaw of Jedi teachings, or at least how they’d been bastardized over the centuries

“It would help if you two talked…”

“ _Oh_ ,” Rose began, “We did talk. It’s just not the _‘right time for a relationship’_ ,” She slammed the panel shut and sat on it.

Rey frowned, “But the war is over-” she was cut off by the look Rose shot her. _Ah_ . So that was _exactly_ the problem. Finn had decided they were better off as friends while the war was on, but even now that it wasn’t…

“He’s not interested?”

“See, that would make things too _simple_ , Rey,” Rose tossed the fusing pen back into the toolkit across the room, “No, he hasn’t said he’s not interested, he just deflects, and _deflects_ , and-” She cut herself off, swallowing heavily.

Rey crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall, tracing over her arm wraps idly, “That’s… not healthy?”

Rose chuckled, “Apt observation.” 

“I’m _sorry_ , Rose, I’m not good at this-” Rey replied, frustrated.

Rose put her hand to her forehead, “I know, I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath, “I’m just- _upset_ , Rey I don’t mean to be sharp with you.”

Clearly this had been wearing at Rose for a while, and Rey couldn’t fault her that, not when she’d been so close to slipping up herself. Ever since the Supremacy, she’d been fraying, slowly, at the edges. Ben had always brought that _undone_ part of her to the forefront. Perhaps it was universal that the person you loved brought out the deepest parts of you, good or bad.

Rey wondered sadly if there was another emotion so joyful and so destructive. She sighed.

“You’re going to have to talk to each other.”

Rose scoffed, “Try telling him that.”

Rey held back her irritation. She wasn’t a commlink, they couldn’t expect her to enable this ridiculous back and forth. In the face of what she and Ben struggled with, this seemed so trivial, and part of her wanted to scream at Rose and Finn to be together while they had _time_ , something she’d never had with Ben. But looking at Rose’s pained face, Rey knew that wasn’t fair. There was no metric to measure suffering.

So she’d help, again, just this once.

“Okay.” And Rey turned and went to find Finn.

Rose called after her, “I didn’t mean _literally_ you tell him that!”, but Rey ignored her. 

Rey stalked through the narrow halls of the Falcon until she reached the cockpit, where Finn was tapping through a datapad.

He turned in his seat abruptly when she walked in, alerted by the Force or her stomping, “Rey, did you talk to-”

“Yes. It’s your turn.” Rey stopped in front of him and crossed her arms, “Go explain whatever's going on with you.”

Finn gave Rey one good look, taking in her frazzled appearance, and nodded.

“Yeah, okay, sure thing…” He rambled, hopping out of his seat and sidling around her.

Once he was gone, Rey turned and collapsed into a chair, a hand at her forehead.

She _really_ needed some sleep.

* * *

When Rey opened her eyes again she was on Exegol, and for once that fact didn’t fill her with dread, but determination.

She scanned her surroundings for any sign of Ben, and found herself on the floor at the foot of the Sith throne, completely alone. Rey’s heart dropped, and she scrambled to her feet. _Where is he?_

_What if he’s gone for good._

_I’m too late._

_Oh, gods,_ Ben _._

Her spiraling thoughts halted when she felt a pulse in the Force. A cry for help. Ben.

Rey ran to the source of the signal, to the edge of the pit Palpatine had thrown Ben into, the one he had climbed out of. She fell to her knees and stared down into it. She felt him, faintly, _weakly_ . Had he called out like this before? Was he reliving every moment of torture they’d endured on Exegol? Every moment no one came for him… _He must think he’s in hell_.

Rey swallowed past the sting in her throat and turned to lower herself down the jagged edge of the pit.

The climb was difficult, and by the time Rey dropped to the damp ground, her hands were bloody from clinging to the sharp rock. She hardly felt the sting as she turned to see Ben, curled on the ground, breathing shallowly. Rey had barely registered that he was there before she hurried forward, collapsing onto her knees at his side.

“Ben!” She cried out, grabbing his shoulder and rolling him onto his back. The face that greeted her was bloodied- just the way it had been when she’d opened her eyes on Exegol after he revived her. Ben looked up at her blurrily, his eyes filled with unshed tears. 

“How many times must we do this…” He said sadly, and Rey’s heart ached, “How many times do I have to watch you disappear, or be taken from you.”

“I’m going to save you.” She insisted, “I-”

“You said that before, too.” Ben swallowed, and his eyes closed, the tears that fell from them leaving tracks through the dust and blood on his face. Rey wanted to scream. Her nightmares hadn’t been so at all, they’d been visions like this one. How many times had she watched him fade in her dreams, only to repeat the same desperate chase to find him?

“Ben, I’m really here. I always have been. You have to believe me.” Rey choked on the last part of her confession, her own tears obscuring Ben’s wide-eyed expression.

“NO!” He exclaimed, lurching forward despite his obvious pain, grasping at her shoulders, “You can’t be! I’m _dead_ , you can’t be- not you-”

“You’re not dead!” Rey screamed back at him, her frustration and heartbreak finally reaching their apex, “Neither of us are dead, Ben!”

Ben stared at her for a tense moment, bewildered, scared, and finally angry, before he buried his head in his hands and screamed, “Then why the FUCK AM I HERE!?”

Rey let out a shaky sob, and Ben immediately jerked back up, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”, his expression was pained, apologetic. The _idiot_.

“Ben you didn’t scare me,” Rey shook her head and wiped at her eyes, “I don’t know how to _help you_.”

“You can’t.” He snarled, bringing his knees up so he could rest his arms on them. Folded like this he appeared almost adolescent, the way his limbs were too long for the amount of space he was trying to take up. Rey maneuvered so that she sat between his legs, and gently pulled his arms away, uncaging him.

“You don’t know that. I _will_.” 

Ben searched her face, the grim determination he found there, and the tense lines of his shoulders softened. He reached forward, hesitantly, to brush a hand over her cheek.

“And if you’re another illusion?”

Her lip curled back in frustration, Rey gripped his wrist and lunged forward, her mouth crashing into his. Her other hand fisted the front of his torn shirt, she ravaged his mouth, though her aggression nearly melted away when he responded with aching gentleness. Ben’s mouth opened and his tongue swept over her lips, shocking her out of the kiss with a jolt of pleasure. Rey tore herself away to glare up at him.

“Am I acting like an illusion?”

Ben chuckled, “You haven’t seen the contents of my dreams, this is rather similar.”

Rey’s teeth clacked with the speed at which she clenched her jaw, trying to stifle the fierce blush rising in her cheeks, “This isn’t the time.”

“ _You_ kissed _me_.”

She didn’t have an excuse for that so Rey simply released Ben’s shirt and sat back on her knees, refusing to acknowledge that he had a point.

“We need to get out of this pit.”

Ben glanced incredulously at the jagged walls, “I did manage it once, but there’s hardly a point now. Things will just reset.”

Rey’s eyebrows quirked, “Reset?”

Ben lowered his eyes, frustrated, “I had thought this was a sort of… punishment. To relive the hour of my death. But if I’m truly not dead, it must be something else.”

“If I find out the Force has been punishing you, Ben, I’m going to tear it apart,” Rey growled, and Ben looked up at her, alarmed. His throat worked, and she knew he was struggling to not cry. After all this, he was still under the impression she wouldn’t raze the galaxy for him?

Ben stared into her eyes with such intensity, Rey wondered if _he_ was going to kiss _her_ this time. But instead, he spoke, in that deep rumbling tone of his, “If I hadn’t been able to bring you back, I would have done the same.”

And Rey knew then that if Ben lived in a world where she didn’t, he would have become undone just like she had begun to. It would have opened a wound in him to match her own, only made worse because she would have been _truly_ dead, and not just missing. That was the curse of a dyad, to be woven so intricately together that if one was taken away, the other would unravel entirely.

They were both lucky that fate had lapsed enough in its cruelty to spare them of that.

But now they needed to solve the riddle they’d been presented.

“Maybe this is a sort of vision,” Rey began, distractedly running her thumb over Ben’s wrist, which she hardly registered she was still holding, “How else could it move forward and backward in time?”

Ben winced as he moved to stand, “It’s an awfully immersive vision, then.”, Rey quickly grabbed onto his arm to help him up, and pulled it over her shoulders to support him, “Thanks.”

She just nodded, gritting her teeth against the strain of his weight. _Force, he’s solidly built_.

Rey helped Ben towards the wall and stared up at the daunting climb. _This is not going to be easy_.

“We should just let things reset,” Ben said, clearly unmotivated by the prospect of scaling the cliff with his injuries, “I may very well just end up back in the pit. This place is fickle.”

“Okay,” Rey began, trying to reign in her frustration at their lack of control, “How do we make it reset?”

“We can’t _make_ it do anything.”

“There has to be some way to control this-”

“I’ve _tried_ .” Ben snapped, before immediately amending his tone, “I’m sorry, Rey, but I’ve tried _everything_.”

Rey made an angry noise low in her throat, _The moment we solve one thing_... 

The situation was wearing on both of them. 

Ben sighed, “You should wake up.”

“No!” Rey spun him around and pressed him against the wall for support, “I’m not leaving you again!”

“Rey, you can’t stay here.” Ben was looking down at her sadly.

“Yes I _can!_ ” Tears began to gather in her eyes as she realized how ridiculous the prospect was. Even so, she couldn’t bear to let him be alone again. Days could pass and her dreams might not allow her to return.

“You have a life you need to live,” Ben held her face gently, “Return to it and come back another night. I’m not going anywhere.”

That was _precisely_ the problem.

She sniffed and moved to rub at her eyes, but Ben caught her wrist and used his other hand to wipe away her tears, “Ben,” she began, in a quavering voice.

“I know.” He kissed her, and Exegol dissolved under her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're moving forward! Can y'all believe I actually let them talk to each other this time?  
> Next chapter: we get to Vulpter, and things kick off! I'm excited for this one, I've been looking forward to writing it for a while :))))))
> 
> Small heads up: now that I'm back at school, updating is going to be a bit more difficult especially as the semester ramps up, so if there's a couple days of delay, I apologize. School is the priority, but I will do my best to finish by each weekend.


	6. Going Under

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey makes a roadmap. Truth comes to light.

" _For everything you gain, you lose something else._ "

Vulpter was a horrible planet. Worse than Jakku, if Rey was being honest. The massive rings of trash that orbited just outside its atmosphere cast swaths of shadows over the barren rock, causing long hours of false night. The cities here were few and far between, but thanks to the recovery efforts sanctioned by the New Republic after the fall of the Empire, they were habitable. Most of Vulpter was, at this point, but there were still areas too densely polluted to venture near.

They had landed the Falcon in Hpaq, an industrial city like many others on Vulpter. The air was breathable, but not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. At the very least the skyline wasn’t barren like Jakku’s, though this planet was a wasteland of its own kind.

Rey negotiated briefly with the fueling station attendants, and hurried back to the ship, pulling the loose fabric of her hood over her mouth. The acrid winds tore at her cloak as she practically ran back to the landing pad. It could have been the dead of night for how dark the sky was, but it was midday. They had just arrived in time for the hour-long sweep of one of the trash rings shadows. Lucky them.

Running up the ramp, Rey was greeted by Rose and Finn shouting for her to close it. Air filtration would take a while to get the smell out of the Falcon. D-0 zipped past her legs as she strode towards the cockpit, having recently finished charging.

“Welcome back!” They droned, managing to sound excited despite their monotonal vocal system. 

Rey smiled briefly at the small droid. She liked D-0. She liked most droids. But this one couldn’t help but remind her of her parents, and the uncomfortable truth of them. It wasn’t something Rey  _ liked  _ to be reminded of.

Because even if what they did was to protect her, she was still  _ so fucking furious _ .

Instead of dwelling on it, she went to her room.

One more jump. They were close enough now that they would make it in one, and then it would be up to her to navigate the dense nebulas in the center of the Deep Core. What she needed was a roadmap.

So she’d make one.

Rey dropped off her bag at the entrance to the captain’s quarters, and slumped off her cloak, tossing it to the side. She hardly cared to be neat when she was this close. She retrieved the Jedi texts from where she’s stashed them by her bed- kept close in case inspiration struck her suddenly.

Rey flipped through the unnamed book of equations and theories until she reached the page with a small inscription; “ _ meditation required throughout to discern general heading in addition to Thorpe Theorem.” _ Here. These were the only instructions she had to go on.

Back a few pages, she found the aforementioned Theorem. Tacked onto the paper with some rudimentary adhesive, was a page conscribing the solution, titled “ _ Phases of Mortis _ ” Rey studied it, taking note of the later added information provided by some Jedi Master.

The purpose of the Theorem was to assist in galactic travel, specifically in calculating your own routes through potentially uncharted space. Rey ran her fingers over the delicate page. It was drenched in Force signatures, as it had always been. She turned back to the inscription and focused on the ink. Someone had posited the possibility of finding the Wellspring using the Theorem. For all Rey knew, it had been done before. And even if it hadn’t been, she couldn’t afford to fail. Rey shut her eyes and focused.

She felt them, the Jedi who had scribbled notes onto the margins of the page. Inquisitive and obsessed, they had searched for answers, much like Rey did now. The purpose, she could feel, was different. But the method was the same. This Jedi had hungered for knowledge of the Cosmic Force, because they had wanted to understand  _ everything _ . They had wanted to know what had been... and  _ there _ , deep within, Rey sensed a darker need to know what would come in the future. To know fate was the key to changing it, in this person’s mind at least. And there was a fate they’d wanted to change. Rey could relate.

But this wasn’t what she was looking for. 

The Wellspring had to have some sort of signature. It was a Force planet, for fuck's sake, of  _ course  _ it did. So Rey cast her senses outward, into the wilds of the Deep Core.

She felt Vulpter, it’s corrupted atmosphere crying out in pain to the Force. Further away, there was Tython, which supposedly held the first Jedi Temple. It’s signature was intense, yet somehow serene. An epicenter in the Force. Not the one she was looking for. Rey moved away from the mythic planet, and in towards the violent swaths of space at the Galaxy’s center.

She let out a shuddering gasp at the sudden barrage of feelings. Her breath was abnormally loud, even in the meditative state she’d entered. Her own heartbeat seemed to echo around her, and she focused on it, grounding herself. The vibrant sensations of the Deep Core were sucked away.  _ Damn _ .

Frustrated, Rey grit her teeth and forced herself to relax again. To let everything slip away. Letting go of every sense of presence was the most difficult part of meditation. And when she was casting herself so deep into the unknown, it was near terrifying. 

Rey tried again.

The roar from within the center of the Deep Core was deafening. Tentatively, she reached out and felt the threshold she needed to cross. The Force seemed to vibrate from within it, as though barely contained by the edges of a million nebulae. She pushed into it and was immersed in color. 

_ Oh _ . 

There was  _ so much.  _

Distantly, Rey wondered if she was even breathing.

She pushed forward- at this point, it felt more like sinking. Like letting all the air out of her lungs so her body dropped like a stone into the water, with nothing to keep it afloat.

The pressure was deafening for one, terrible moment, and then she felt it. A steady presence. A balance amongst the chaos.  _ Gotcha _ .

Rey knew where she needed to go.

Opening her eyes, Rey looked around and realized that everything in her room was floating, including her. She looked up and smacked her head into the ceiling, promptly breaking the spell, and sending herself and everything else in the air crashing to the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of her, but she was too numb to feel the pain.  _ I found it _ .

“ _ Rey? _ ” Finn’s shout brought her senses back to her, and Rey grunted as she sat up.

“I’m fine!” She called back. In reality, she was shaking, full to bursting with adrenaline. She felt like she was barely touching the ground. _ I found it _ .

She needed to go set the course.

* * *

Rey walked into the cockpit, and into the familiar tense atmosphere that had suffused the air between Rose and Finn for the past few days. She didn’t know what the two of them had talked about, but apparently it hadn’t gone well. Rey had been meaning to ask one of them what had happened but was hesitant to injure things further with her input. It seemed her previous advice had completely backfired. She stuffed down the guilt and slid into the pilot seat.

Finn was busying himself with tapping through an article on Vulpter, while Rose was fiddling with the fusing pen Rey had modified for her. She had refused to listen to Rey’s explanation of what she did in favor of reverse engineering it herself. 

Rey’s two friends were pointedly ignoring each other, despite the pained glances Finn would send Rose’s way on occasion. 

Sitting there in silence was agony, especially with her nerves ringing from her use of the Force. The quiet felt deafening, as did Finn and Rose’s emotions. She had to say  _ something _ .

“I found the Wellspring,” She began and smiled lightly at the half-hearted “ _ whoop _ ” Finn let out, “We’re grounded for the next half hour. If either of you wants to wander around, take an oxygen mask.” 

Rose glanced over at her, “I am  _ not  _ going outside.”

“I might,” Finn mumbled, and blanched under the fierce hurt that practically vibrated from Rose. Rey winced, having sensed it as well. 

Rey floundered for a way to diffuse the situation because surely Finn storming off would only make things worse, “ _ Or _ you could beat me in holochess some more!” She sounded falsely positive even to her own ears.

“Because that worked out fine last time.” 

Rose abruptly swept her tools up into her arms and hurried from the cockpit.

“ _ Finn _ .” Rey admonished, utterly at a loss.

He turned to her and whispered furiously, “It was  _ your  _ idea to talk to her!”

“It was a good idea!”

Finn’s hands gestured wildly in emphasis, “ _ How? _ ”

Rey whisper-shouted back at him, “Because you were supposed to confess your feelings, and then everything would have been fine!”

He suddenly looked very nervous, “What feelings?”

“The ones you have for Rose!”

“I don’t have-” She shot him a significant look, “I don’t know! I don’t know what I feel, okay?” Finn’s voice had raised significantly from a whisper, “I thought- I thought it was Poe, and then Rose happened… and I don’t know. I didn’t want to lead anyone on! What if I get it wrong?”

That was one revelation right after the other, but Rey wasn’t really surprised, “Search your feelings!”

“I don’t know how!”

“Well, you need to figure it out!” Rey’s breathing was coming heavier, “What if something happens and you don’t get to- and you never-” Tears blurred her vision. The Force rippled around her.

Finn looked taken-aback, “Rey?”

“You don’t know how much time you have Finn! Neither of you do! And you’re so  _ lucky  _ to be together even just as-” she cut herself off with a hand to her mouth, trying to stifle her sobs.

“What’s going on?” Rose’s voice was uncharacteristically soft as she stood in the doorway.

“Nothing!” Rey gasped at the same time Finn said, “I don’t know!”

“Look, if this is about Finn and me, Rey we’re going to figure it out.” Rose insisted, coming to crouch by Rey as she shook silently in her seat.

“We are?” Finn’s relieved voice registered distantly, as if through water. 

She had to calm down.

“It’s not about-” Rey cut herself off. This was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. She  _ had  _ to be okay because if she wasn’t, they would know something was wrong, something other than just her Force abilities going awry, “Just let me- I need to be alone,” Despite herself, Rey choked on the last word, and a shudder of Force energy went through her, rattling the chair beneath her. She stood up. She needed to leave.

“Rey, is it the Force?” Finn exclaimed, standing up at her side, eager to help his friend. One of his hands reached out to her arm and Rey nearly flung him away from her, like she had on the fallen Death Star. Instead she stumbled back, holding herself, afraid to let her friends touch her.

This had to be a side effect of reaching so deep into the Core. Rey felt unraveled, like she was barely clinging to the physical plain. She wondered what would happen if she let go. Would her soul drift away, would it be inexorably drawn to wherever Ben was?

“I overexerted myself.” She admitted, leaning heavily on the wall behind her, “When I was looking for the Wellspring.”

Finn seemed hurt, “You could have asked me for help. Isn’t there some Jedi thing where we can meditate together?”

There  _ was _ , it was something she and Ben had done in battle, aided by their bond. But to let Finn see so deeply into her Force signature would allow him to see the injured tether within her, the one connecting her to Ben. That couldn’t happen. 

“I have to do this alone.”

That was the wrong thing to say, because as Rose verbally protested, Finn set his shoulders and approached her, reaching out with one hand. It was so familiar, Rey felt a surge of grief wash over her, and the wall behind her shook in response.

“Don’t-” 

His hand hovered over her arm, right where a leather band obscured the scar she’d received on the Supremacy.  _ Stop _ .

“We can help you, Rey, you’re not the only Force user anymore-” Finn touched her arm lightly, and Rey felt panic rise in her as his Force signature inadvertently merged with hers. Belatedly, she knew that he hadn’t meant to act on his earlier suggestion, that his control over the Force was more instinctual than specific, that it wasn’t his fault when her grief rushed over her- when he discovered the cause of it.

This time Rey did shove him away, flinging him across the cockpit and into Rose, who managed to keep both of them from falling by gripping the back of the copilot’s chair.

In the silence, the blood roaring in Rey’s ears was deafening.

Finn stared at her, eyes wide with shock. 

Rose looked between them in confusion, “What was that?”

“Rey,” Finn started, and a sick feeling settled in her stomach.  _ Not like this _ , “Wh-what-”  _ They weren’t supposed to find out like this _ .

“I’m sorry,” Rey’s voice had never sounded so small to her own ears.

“You-  _ Ren _ .”

“I  _ wanted  _ to tell you,”

Rose was bewildered, “What?  _ Kylo  _ Ren? What does this-”

“What _ is this, _ Rey? He’s  _ dead _ , why-”

Rey flinched, “He’s not,” She hunched her shoulders, “He’s alive and I need to find him.”

“To kill him?” Rose offered, helpfully.

“No.” She and Finn spoke at the same time, in two completely different tones. Rey hurried on before he could interrupt, “He’s my- we’re a dyad. Connected.”

“Then break the connection! You don’t need to _ do this! _ ” Something seemed to occur to him, “It wasn’t your choice, right? We can reverse it, Rey you don’t need to be tied to that-”

“It can’t be broken-”

“We can try!”

“ _ I don’t want to! _ ” She screamed, and Finn looked taken aback. Rose, understanding what they meant even if she didn’t feel it, took a step back. Rey began to cry in earnest.

Finn’s eyes were bright with tears, “I don’t understand.”

“I wanted to explain, but I didn’t know how!” She hugged herself, feeling utterly alone amongst her closest friends, “After Starkiller-”

“This has been going on since  _ Starkiller? _ ”

“I didn’t know it at first, but the Force kept connecting us, and we- we  _ talked _ ,” Rey let out a gasping sob, “And he listened to me, even when I lashed out, he was never angry, just sad. So  _ sad _ .”

Rose was silently shaking her head.

“And then I- I saw something and I felt so  _ alone _ . But he was there, and he cried with me, and I thought- thought if I went to him-”

Finn gaped at her, “You didn’t.”

“I thought I could turn him-”

“You’re in love with him,” Rose said, not a question, but a fact. Finn looked at her, bewildered, then back at Rey, expecting her to deny it.

But Rey just cried.

“No…” Finn whispered.

“He killed Snoke for me.” She said, quietly, “And he offered me a place at his side. And I left.”

“He tried to _ kill us _ , Rey he wanted to destroy the Resistance!” Finn was shouting now, furiously wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. 

Even though she could never regret it, Rey felt as though she’d betrayed him. Like she’d betrayed all of them.

Even so, she shook her head, ”He never wanted me dead.”

“And the rest of us?” Rose asked, her voice heavy with a coldness she’d never directed at Rey before.

“I didn’t  _ mean  _ for this to happen,” She cried.

“He manipulated you,” Finn snarled, “Used your compassion against you. To try and turn you.”

Rey shook her head, laughing humorlessly, “No. He gave his life for me,” She looked up at her friend’s shocked expressions, “I died on Exegol. He brought me back, and it cost him  _ everything _ .”

There was a long beat of silence. Rey couldn’t look at them.

She had to leave- before they left her. Rey drew a quick, pained breath, and practically ran from the cockpit.

“Rey!” Finn called after her, and she heard two sets of footsteps following close behind, but she was too fast. Charging past her former quarters, Rey used the Force to pull her bag and the texts to her, reaching forward with her mind to activate the bay doors. D-0 skittered out of her way as she ran to the ramp, nearly falling down it in her haste to leave.

“Rey, STOP!” Rose screamed behind her, but she was already gone. Rey threw a hand back to shut the doors again, not looking to see them rumble closed, cutting her off from the shouts of her friends.

The shipyard was full, and Rey cast about in the Force to locate an empty craft. There, on the edge of the platform was a  VCX-100 light freighter. A slightly older ship, but fast enough that it would do. Rey opened the hatch with a wave of her hand.

She heard the Falcon’s bay door open behind her, and the frantic shouts of her friends as they sprinted to catch up. Rey practically vaulted through the still opening hatch of the VCX-100, and immediately ran for the cockpit, barely taking note of the lived-in interior.

It took her all of 30 seconds to get the ship off the ground, and another 30 to blast through the atmosphere.

Rey jumped to hyperspace immediately, and having escaped, being alone with only the lingering adrenaline, she curled into a ball in the pilot’s seat and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know whether to apologize or not, 'cause lots of you were excited for Rey's friends to find out the truth but idk if you wanted it to go this way specifically... Poor Rey, right?   
> Next chapter: Rey arrives at the Wellspring of Life, and Clone Wars fans know where this is going. Maybe.


	7. Connection and Corruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finally gets to the Wellspring. The author makes Clone Wars references. And y'all can have some Ben POV, as a treat.

_ "The winding path to peace is always a worthy one, regardless of how many turns it takes." _

After jumping through hyperspace as far as she could, it took Rey three near-misses to get used to the bearings of her borrowed ship. 

The center of the Deep Core was dense and filled with debris- both natural and mechanical. Many ships had ventured into it never to return, and Rey was very nearly one of them several times before she got used to the jumpy controls of the  VCX-100. The ship was smaller than the Falcon and lacked its numerous tricky modifications, both things Rey hadn’t had time to consider when running away.

At the very least, the effects of her meditation had worn off after hours of hyperspace travel. She’d plotted her course to circumvent the first few debris fields, but at a certain point, the entire horizon had become littered with obstacles, and she’d been forced to come out of lightspeed and navigate manually. Luckily for her, she was approaching her destination.

While outside the centerfold of the galaxy, Rey had struggled to sense the Wellspring, but now that she was so close, it thrummed at her senses like a second heartbeat. Tentative hope echoed it.

Rey swerved around a huge meteor and sped past the decrepit remains of an ancient ship. She shuddered and tried not to imagine herself falling to the same fate.

Arching around another vast sheet of rock brought her out into a brilliant glow, as though she'd discovered a tiny sun among the devastation. Rey realized belatedly that the light was what she had been searching for. The Wellspring of Life. 

“Wow.” She said, articulately. For a moment she just stared at the shimmering planet. Until a proximity alert blared in her ear.

She was so distracted by its luminous surface, she had nearly crashed into a wandering cluster of debris. Spinning out of the way just in time, Rey flipped a few switches and idled the ship for a moment, allowing the reality of the situation to dawn on her. She was really here. Just one long week of travel and she’d arrived.

The anticipation was almost nauseating. She wanted so desperately to free Ben, to find him, and despite her drive to do so, Rey had almost doubted she'd make it so far. The Wellspring was a place of myth, a legend. Being a few minutes from its surface was ludicrous. But so were a lot of the things she'd experience recently.

Rey didn’t waste any more time, punching the accelerator and speeding towards the Wellspring. She barely registered dodging the few remaining obstacles, her mind was so preoccupied with a heady mix of hope and apprehension. 

In a few minutes, her horizon was swallowed by the soft yellow glow emanating from the planet. Long cracks split its surface into sheets of gold, between which lay glimpses into a shadowed interior. Rey had _no_ idea where she should land.

Closing in on the ground provided an unobstructed view of a barren desert. Rey coasted over the surface incredulously. There was  nothing  here… Unless her destination lay below. She angled the ship further down, heading to one of the long cracks in the pale rock. 

The Wellspring looked almost as though someone had taken Jakku and cracked it like a turazza egg. She couldn't decide if the idea made her like or dislike this place. She'd at least expected a Force planet to be... greener. The Wellspring was staunchly yellow. Rey flew the ship along one of the canyons and looked down into its depths. There, deep within, was something glowing. She squinted and flew lower. It appeared to be getting brighter…

Rey’s eyes widened and she jerked the ship to the side, just in time to avoid a direct hit of shimmering energy.

“ _ Shit! _ ” She exclaimed as the ship shook violently. The edge of the blast had caught her across her right wing. Alarms screamed around her, and Rey cursed frantically as she twisted knobs and pulled switches, trying to combat the damage that had already been done. The VCX-100 shuddered and began to careen towards the crack she had been flying over.

“Damnit!” Rey sprang from her seat and ran from the cockpit, grabbing her bag and tearing down the short hallway, skidding to a stop in front of the escape pod hatch. It appeared as though whoever’s ship this was wasn’t going to get it back. Rey opened the hatch and clambered inside, clutching her bag to her chest. She shut the hatch, strapped in and slammed her fist down on the launch button.

There was a rush of air, and then Rey was blasted violently from the ship, clutching at the claustrophobic sides of the pod as it spun down from the doomed light freighter. Her breaths came out in staccato gasps, and she shut her eyes to block out the nauseating scene of rotating sky and ground that blurred outside the viewport. For a dizzying moment, she was free-falling. Then there was a heavy thunk, and Rey buckled in her seat as, presumably, the parachute activated, causing the pod to jerk around her while it abruptly slowed.

Rey lay a hand over her chest and attempted to breathe slowly, trying to calm her racing heart. That had been her first time crashing a ship. She’d  _ never  _ been so reckless before.  _ Stupid _ , she reprimanded herself,  _ What good are you to anyone dead? _

After several long minutes, the escape pod thudded to a halt, and Rey peered outside the viewport and into a dim, dense forest, cast in an eerie orange light. She had landed safely, but there was no telling what would await her outside.

Rey emerged from the escape pod tentatively, lightsaber in hand, ready to be lit. There could very easily be hostile creatures in the Wellspring, even hostile sentients. Her pack was strapped tight to her waist, resting on her hip and concealed by her robe. It was unfortunate that she hadn’t had time to grab her blaster from the Falcon, so the holster on her thigh was empty, but Rey was confident that she’d be fine with only the saber and the Force. Unless her abilities went haywire… she decided to keep Force use to a minimum, just in case she exhausted herself like she’d begun to on Barlok.

Rey looked around her, assessing the surrounding forest. The Wellspring was beautiful, in a strange, unsettling way. What she’d assumed to be tree trunks while in the pod, were, in fact, massive mushrooms that stretched high above her and nearly concealed the orange glow from the underside of the surface. At her feet were curling vines that twisted over plush moss. In the distance, she could hear rustling and somber calls from animals she had no will to encounter. Rey cast her senses about her, and detected a few benign signatures among the mushrooms. Her eyes widened as she realized that the creatures were Force-sensitive. 

But that made sense, everything here certainly felt connected to the Force. Even the flora sung with energy. It _was_ a "Force planet", after all . Clipping her saber to her belt, she picked a direction at random and set out for answers.

As she walked, she stretched her senses around her, sweeping idly for anything of interest. Rey had no idea what precisely she was looking for, but this was where she was meant to be. She felt calm,  _ balanced _ . It made sense that this place was heralded as the crux of the Living and Cosmic Force. Here, at the center of the Deep Core, in the midst of chaos, was the eye of the storm that was the Galaxy. She wondered how many Jedi had walked on this planet, or if others had found it. Sith, those attuned to the light or the dark. Or perhaps neither. Maybe those who had found their  _ own  _ balance would be most welcome here. 

Rey suddenly felt very out of place.

In the distance, she could see the beginnings of a soft glow, and Rey sped up, any thought of the escape pod she was leaving behind far from her mind.

Pushing aside a spray of curling vines, Rey stumbled out of the forest, and promptly almost fell from the edge of a chasm. Bracing a hand on the mushroom beside her, Rey looked in surprise at a horizon of _ floating islands _ .

Glancing down into what she’d assumed was the edge of a cliff, Rey found that she was on one of the islands herself. 

Her stomach lurched uncomfortably. Rationally, she knew the Force was keeping the ground beneath her afloat, but her mind rebelled against the notion of being suspended so precariously in the air.

But as she gazed out at the hundreds of islands she could see drifting under the fractured canopy of the surface, Rey felt her apprehension melt away. It was incredible what an untapped well of the Force could do.  _ Beautiful _ .

“I wish you were here to see this…” She murmured unthinkingly. Ben would be  _ fascinated  _ by this place. She wondered if he knew of the Wellspring, and decided to ask him next time she saw him. Rey considered that the next time may very well be in the waking world, and her heartbeat sped up at the prospect.

“ _ It has been a long time since we’ve welcomed a visitor here. _ ”

Rey gasped, spinning around with her lightsaber already on, and found herself face to face with a floating orb of light.

“W-what?” She said, caught completely off guard.

The yellow light emitting from the orb flashed, and Rey scrunched her face up, blinking against the harsh glow. A shadow seemed to bloom within the light and unfold from itself, revealing a robed figure wearing an expressionless white mask.

Rey drew her saber defensively across her body, “Who are you.”

The figure tilted their head to the side, “ _ I am Serenity, a Priestess of the Force. One of five… or perhaps five in one, depending on how you look at it, _ ” She continued without explaining her cryptic sentence, “ _ And you are Rey. Skywalker, Palpatine, a nobody from Jakku and the Last Jedi. You are many and one as well, _ ” Rey slowly lowered her lightsaber, taken aback, “ _ But who do you want to be, Rey of Many Names? _ ”

Her mouth opened and closed. She didn’t know what to say.

The eyes of the Priestess’ mask turned up at the corners, “ _ I’m sure you’ll have an answer someday. _ ”

Rey deactivated her saber and clipped it to her belt, “What I  _ have  _ is questions,” Serenity hovered lower, silently entreating her to go on, “I need to know where Ben is. And how to bring him back.” If the Priestess knew her name, surely she knew who his as well.

Serenity hummed quietly, “ _ You cannot gain this knowledge as you are _ .”

“Oh?” Rey snapped, growing frustrated, “And what am I?”

The Priestess seemed to shudder, and suddenly she blurred before Rey’s eyes, multiplying dizzyingly until there were five Priestesses in front of her, each wearing a different mask, depicting a different emotion. One was angry, one weeping, one laughing, one puzzled. At the center was Serenity, unchanged. Rey took a step back.  _ What is this? _

“ _ You are us. _ ” The first Priestess said.

“ _ You’re so angry _ ,” Began the Priestess whos mask depicted utter rage.

“ _ And sad _ ,” Continued the crying Priestess.

“ _ So happy to finally be here _ ,” Added the grinning Priestess.

“ _ And so utterly lost. _ ” Finished the confused Priestess.

The five of them circled behind her, and Rey spun to watch them hovering over the abyss at the edge of the island. Serenity lowered herself so that her two-toed feet barely brushed the mossy ground.

She spoke, “ _ You are unbalanced. Split down the center,  _ wounded _. _ ” The crying Priestess put her head in her hands and continued, “ _ You wound the Force around you _ ,”

“ _ You tear it apart! _ ”

“ _ Why are you doing this? _ ”

“ _ Don’t fret, you’ll figure it out! _ ”

“Stop!” Rey shouted, at her wit's end, “Just tell me how to fix myself!”

The five Priestesses paused. Serenity drifted back to her sisters, and the four of them merged in the first Priestess again. There was a long silence, broken only by the sounds of the forest and Rey’s distressed breathing.

“ _ Oh, Rey. You are not damaged _ .” Serenity replied calmly.

Rey blinked furiously, trying to clear away her tears.

“ _ You are damaging _ .” 

With a flash of light, the Priestess was once again a glowing orb, and with an unnatural speed it fell, causing Rey to rush to the edge of the island, to see where it had gone. But the yellow light was nowhere to be found.

“ _ There are no answers here _ ,” Serenity’s voice echoed around her, “ _ Only trials not meant for you. _ ” And then all was silent.

There was just Rey, kneeling in front of an abyss, alone.

* * *

Ben Solo stood on Exegol, or at least some Force-damned echo of it, and watched Sith lighting crash in the distance.

He had been correct in assuming this cursed plain would bring him out of the pit itself, but it had taken longer than he’d anticipated. Being trapped down there alone after Rey had disappeared had been maddening. Like so many other times in this place, Ben had started to wonder in a dark corner of his mind, if he’d ever gotten out of the pit at all. But at some point he had blinked and found himself in front of the Sith throne again. And now he sat cross-legged at its feet, waiting.

The thought of sitting on the throne had crossed Ben’s mind, but despite the relative practicality of it, the notion felt  _ wrong _ . Such a thing may have enticed him once, but that life was long passed. And he’d thought his new one was as well.

But he was  _ alive _ . The notion brought a painful jolt of hope to his chest. If Rey was to be believed, he hadn’t died on Exegol, this  _ wasn’t  _ a punishment ordained by the Force- and Ben wasn’t sure if he found that comforting or not. At least in his delusions of eternal retribution, he’d known what was happening to him and  _ why _ . But now he was lost.

Ben had felt so  _ tired _ , cradling Rey in his arms. It had taken everything in him to give her the parting kiss she’d wanted, and not simply collapsed from shock and exhaustion when she’d pulled his face down to hers. The sudden adrenaline had been enough to keep him going long enough to show her he felt the same.

And how could he not? He would have been content to die saving her, with his name on her lips the final thing he heard, but Rey…  _ Rey _ . Ben swallowed tightly. He’d  _ never  _ imagined she would return his feelings. There had been fleeting hope, of course, but he’d dismissed it as a childish fantasy- surely the world was too cruel. Surely he didn’t deserve it.

And he didn’t. But miraculously, Rey didn’t seem to care what he deserved. 

_ Force, I love her _ , Ben shut his eyes, and a small smile graced his lips. She’d sworn to find him, to save him. Those words had felt hollow in his visions of her before, but then he’d believed she was a phantom sent to torment and sooth his damned ghost. And now… now that Ben knew she had been real... Hope and guilt warred in him. He had wasted so much  _ time _ . But there was no good reason to dwell on that. In truth he’d wasted much more than time, all his  _ life  _ as Kylo Ren had been a waste. If he let himself think on it for too long, Ben knew he would fall into a despair that he would never climb out of.

If Rey was coming for him, Ben had absolute faith she’d find him. Her steel will rivaled his own, even on his most obstinate days. But the least he could do was find a way to help her.

So Ben closed his eyes, and for the first time since he’d woken up here, he reached out with the Force.

It was like forcing rusted machinery to move, and Ben knew instantly that wasn’t normal. Even if he’d neglected his abilities for months, he would never lose what he’d built his entire life. There was something other than time working against him. Ben turned his focus inward.

There, deep inside him, past the light, and the darkness, in the center of his being that held the shining tether of his dyad, Ben found instead a festering wound. Confusion and fear flooded him. The bond couldn’t be  _ gone _ , that was impossible. He dug deeper, and there, underneath that dark chasm, he found a weak manifestation of his connection to Rey.

Ben’s eyes flew open. What had  _ happened  _ to them? This was  _ wrong _ , even in the year she’d blocked him out best she could, the bond had never been like this. He knew it had something to do with him being here. Was this place stealing the strength from their connection, like Palpatine had done? Or had it been like this since the ancient Sith had taken the Force energy from them and into himself? 

Ben racked his mind, trying to remember when he’d last sensed their dyad clearly. Surely he would’ve noticed? But how could he, with everything happening? Hadn’t he felt so weak then, barely able to stand, and completely unable to stop Palpatine from flinging him into a pit… But why would the bond remain  _ wounded  _ like this after Rey had defeated Palpatine?

Had Ben’s fading away been a cause or a symptom? He put his head in his hands. 

He would keep trying. Keep searching himself and his surroundings- no matter how weakly the Force came to him.

That was all Ben could do. That and hope Rey was finding answers of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey: so no answers?? *smashes mushroom tree*  
> It appears our journey is not at its end quite yet! Oh you thought this was gonna be one roadtrip?? The roadtrip has barely begun, babey!   
> Next chapter: Rey is going to learn something here even if it kills her.
> 
> If you're wondering what the Wellspring and the Priestesses are from, check out the Clone Wars episode Destiny, in which Yoda does some stuff.


	8. Disillusionment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Finn talk and Rey goes thru it.

_"The most dangerous beast is the beast within."_

If Rey had learned anything from overextending her abilities while searching for the Wellspring, it was that she hadn’t died doing so, and that meant she could do it again.

So at the edge of the floating island she’d landed on, Rey crushed down her frustration, her anger, her hopelessness, and reached out into the Force.

It was like touching a livewire.

Rey struggled to regulate her breathing. All of her senses sung with the energy around her, energy from the animals, the plants, the islands themselves. But there was an epicenter that she’d been able to find on the Falcon, that was what she had to look for. The calmness she had experienced in that place was essential to finding any answers here. So Rey took a deep breath and unfocused her senses, allowing all of the different signatures to blur into one. 

Her mind hazy, Rey stood up. There was something calling to her among the white noise of the Force planet. A spinning center of chaos within the Wellspring. A break in the balance. 

Rey had felt unwelcome in the stillness of this place, as though her very presence disrupted the calm around her. The Priestess had called her  _ damaging _ . She turned towards the whirlpool of darkness she’d sensed ahead. It was violent, tearing at the peace around it greedily, always hungry, never growing in size- simultaneously gluttonous and utterly deprived. The void inside Rey yawned ever wider. _ Like calls to like _ .

Now she just needed to find her way to it.

* * *

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Rose stared out of the viewport, nervously surveying the chaotic field of debris ahead.

Finn was equally apprehensive, “This is what Rey plotted on the nav. It has to be.”

Rose leaned back in the copilot’s seat and steepled her fingers under her chin, “Can you sense her?”

“It’s impossible to tell with all this interference,” Finn grumbled, arcing the ship around an asteroid.

“Interference? There’s stuff  _ alive  _ in here?” 

“No, but the Core is full of… events.” His eyes lowered, “So many lost ships- so many deaths. Those leave behind signatures.”

There was something troubling Finn. An inkling of recognition that lingered in the back of his mind as he sensed the tragedies ahead of them. Death, he had learned, left a scar on the Force. Especially the death of a Force-sensitive, and Finn could feel a few in the nebula they were navigating. The Core was littered with scars, barely noticeable on their own, but as a collective, they were hard to ignore. Little spots of warped emptiness in the Force, wrinkles in the cosmos… Finn recognized their signatures.

They felt like Rey’s. 

“Watch it!” Rose’s shout interrupted his stream of consciousness, and Finn cursed, swerving around the shattered hull of a ship.

“Sorry!” He winced as the mechanic debris swept by the viewport. That could have been them.

Rose patted him awkwardly on the back, “Hey, what are copilots for?” she replied, drily.

Neither of them had any idea how to deal with the tension they’d been ignoring since… much longer than Finn liked to admit. Rey running off had only pushed it further to the back of his mind, but it was still ever-present in their interactions. It was agonizing.

This was going to be a long couple of hours.

“How much do you know about the... Wellspring?” Rose asked, pausing for a moment, probably to remember what Rey had called their destination.

Finn could hardly blame her for trying to find any way to break the silence.

“It’s known as a ‘Force planet’. Rey found mentions of it in the Jedi texts. And  _ apparently  _ it has answers about… about Kylo Ren, I guess.” 

Finn frowned out at the expanse of asteroids and broken ships. Finding out that Rey had lied to him about the purpose of the trip, that she had lied about so much more before that… It  _ hurt _ . Deeply. He knew Rose likely felt the same way, but Finn had always considered himself Rey’s closest friend. He’d had friends in the First Order, as much as one could within the oppressive stormtrooper program, and then there had been Poe, but only briefly before he met Rey. She was the first person he felt that he really knew. 

He didn’t feel like he knew her  _ at all  _ anymore.

“Yeah, about that,” Rose began, referring to Kylo Ren, “You didn’t know, did you?”

“No.” Finn said through a clenched jaw, “I didn’t.”

“Not even with the Force?”

He shook his head, “It’s not that simple. The only reason I sensed their…  _ bond _ , was because I went into Rey’s mind.”

Rose looked over at him, alarmed, and Finn quickly amended his statement,

“It was an accident. I don’t know, I guess I just reached out instinctively,” He took one hand off the controls to rub between his eyes, “I can’t believe she didn’t  _ tell  _ me.’

“I don’t think she told anyone.”

“I know, but I’m- I thought we were best friends!”

The two of them were silent for a long moment, and then Finn shook his head.

“I don’t understand how she could love him. All he’s  _ ever  _ done is hurt people.”

Rose flopped back into her seat, “I know how you feel, Finn, but I don’t think either of us knows as much about him as she does,” She gestured angrily, “There has to be a reason she could look past what he’s done. Rey said they talked, that he was kind to her-”

“To manipulate her! To get her to join him!”

“ _ Maybe _ , but why give her his life?” Rose was now glaring at the ceiling, “He must have had some change of heart. If Rey’s plan- whatever it is- works, we can ask him ourselves.”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of questions for Ren,  _ right  _ after I punch his teeth in.”

Rose laughed, “And Rey’s gonna let you do that?”

Finn pointed at her, keeping his eyes on the debris field ahead, “It won’t matter if I’m fast enough!” He was rewarded by another laugh, “I never did get to pay him back for my spine.”

“‘Cause  _ that’s  _ your only issue with Kylo Ren.”

“That and breaking Rey’s heart. The Supreme Leader stuff comes  _ third _ .”

There was another prolonged silence.

“Why was she so upset earlier?” Rose asked, “What were you two talking about?”

“I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that already,” Finn grumbled.

He could feel Rose’s frustrated stare, “Yeah and I’m not going to leave it alone until you talk about it.”

Finn threw one hand up in exasperation, “ _ Why? _ ” He exclaimed, “Can’t you just let it go? We don’t always have to talk about feelings.”

“Your  _ feelings  _ are important to me, Finn- I Just-” She paused, reigning herself in, “I want to understand.”

“I already explained it.”

“But you didn’t! You said I was _ confusing you _ , that’s not an explanation!”

Finn swerved around an asteroid, narrowly avoiding it in his distraction, “Rose, can we do this some other time?”

Rose swiveled her seat around and drew her legs up, crossing them on top of the chair, “When you can run from the conversation again? No, we’re doing this  _ now _ .”

Finn made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, “Now when I’m trying not to crash the ship?!”

“Use the Force.”

“That’s not how the Force _ works! _ ”

“Finn.” Rose’s voice was deadly serious now, and he realized with a sinking feeling that things were about to get very personal, 

“I’m in love with you and I need closure about it so  _ please  _ just reject me openly instead of dodging it again.”

Finn jerked the controls and the Falcon rumbled to a halt, drifting only slightly as it slowed. He stared ahead, unable to look at Rose, and she continued,

“You’ve known this since  _ Crait _ .” He was certain if he looked now, she would be silently tearing up, “Just say no already, it won’t kill me, dummy.”

But Finn didn’t  _ want  _ to say no. Inhaling sharply, he turned his head to look at Rose, and to his dismay, she was crying. She looked heartbroken but more than anything she looked  _ tired _ .

Finn was envious of Rose somehow, of her ability to wear her emotions openly, to not be instinctively ashamed of them. There was only so much you could unlearn in one year. 

So instead of saying what he felt, he leaned over the short distance between them and kissed Rose square on the mouth.

* * *

There was a pattern to the Wellspring that Rey had initially been oblivious to. The floating islands had paths they traveled, and once Rey had observed this, it was much simpler to move from island to island, towards her destination.

It was a frustratingly slow process, but as she broke through another copse of mushrooms, Rey looked upon the horizon and knew she’d arrived. Up ahead was another island, but the clouds above it were swirling and flashing, converging on the mountainous terrain below them. This was what she’d sensed. The chaos amongst the peace of the Wellspring.

Aiding herself with the Force, Rey lept from the edge of the island she was on and onto the one ahead, landing shakily on the cap of a mushroom. The instant she touched down, Rey could feel a difference in the air. This island was steeped in darkness, the acrid sensation of it burning her throat as she breathed. The wind picked up around her, thrashing her hair and her cloak. 

Stepping forward, towards the mountain, felt  _ wrong,  _ and yet the dark called to her. Rey grit her teeth and began walking anyway, using the descending mushroom as steps to the forest floor.

Earlier in her journey, the orange light had been peaceful, reminiscent of a sunset’s glow. Here, it was dark, choking like a heavy mist. Rey continued through it until the edge of the island was no longer visible behind her. 

Perhaps she should have stayed on top of the mushrooms, down here it was impossible to see the foot of the mountain ahead of her. Anxiety began to creep into the edge of her awareness. What if this was a mistake? What if she’d doomed herself to be lost in this place, on this planet, until the elements consumed her?

The mist ahead of her was reaching a frightening darkness. Was that the mountain? Were the mushrooms above her so dense that light was no longer coming through? Rey frowned as she stared ahead. There was something… she could  _ hear  _ something. It had sounded like the wind at first, but now Rey could make out a pattern of speech. Someone was out there, calling to her. Her eyes widened.

“... _ And now, he ignites it- and  _ kills  _ his true enemy! _ ”

Rey stumbled back and into the blood-red wall of the throne room as Kylo Ren’s saber roared to life in front of her, swinging in a deadly arc- towards Snoke. Rey’s scream mirrored the dying shriek of the decrepit man, as Kylo turned to her next, his yellow eyes like twin fires in the light of his spitting blade.

“B-Ben-” She gasped, too stunned to draw her own lightsaber even as he lowered his to rest above her right shoulder.

Kylo Ren stared back at her for a moment, before his blank expression softened into an almost indulgent smile, “Oh, Rey. Ben is  _ dead _ .” He stepped closer, and rested a gloved hand to the left of her head, effectively trapping her against the wall, “It’s just us now.”

“You didn’t kill me,” she whispered.

The hand next to her head moved to caress her cheek, and despite herself, Rey leaned into it.

“I could never kill you,” His eyes were wide, and despite the sick yellow hue, Rey could see affection in them, “I’ve only ever wanted you to join me.”

Kylo backed up, and Rey felt his absence like a physical wound. His lightsaber still lit by his side, he extended his hand to her.

“And I know you want to.” Kylo’s eyes shined, bright and cold, “You want to take my hand, Rey.”

Rey looked down at the gloved hand he was holding out to her. This scene- it was so familiar, and yet so  _ wrong _ .

“I…” A tear ran hotly down her cheek, “No, no, I wanted to take  _ Ben’s  _ hand.”

“Foolish girl,” Kylo’s voice wasn’t soft anymore, “Ben Solo is _ DEAD! _ ” His lightsaber sputtered and died and the open hand before clenched before snapping forward to reach for her- not as Kylo Ren’s black glove but as a gruesome claw, “ _ I KILLED HIM! _ ” roared Snoke as he lunged for her. 

Rey, finally remembering her lightsaber, ignited it and stabbed Snoke through the chest. He crumpled before her, falling to the ground and revealing the collapsed body of Ben Solo behind him.

“Ben!” Rey screamed, running to his side. Snoke had struck him down, but there was a chance the wound hadn’t yet taken his life. She fell to her knees at his side, and pulled him into her lap, grabbing desperately at his wrist, searching for a pulse.

_ There _ .

Against all odds, Ben’s heart beat weakly, and Rey let out a relieved sob. The walls burned around them as Rey healed him. The Praetorian guards lay dead among the flames, where she and Ben had left them after they’d stormed Snoke’s throne room together.

Ben gasped, his brown eyes snapping open to stare up at her, “ _ Rey _ .”

“You’re okay,” She sobbed, clutching him to her chest. Ben’s arm encircled her waist, and Rey pulled back, eyes wide and concerned as he struggled to right himself.

“We have to go- the Resistance-”

Rey cut him off with her lips. He stiffened against her for a terrifying moment, before tilting his head and kissing her back so, so gently.

She pulled back, and Ben smiled, so brightly that Rey thought her heart might break from it. She grinned back at him and knew in her soul that neither of them would ever be alone again.

Finn and Rose found her like that, clutching herself and weeping, whispering over and over again, “ _ I’m not alone, I’m not alone, I’m not alone, _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really took on a mind of its own, so a few things have been pushed to the next one, whoopsies. Not sure how I feel about the first few scenes :P but WHATEVER  
> Next chapter: the gang is back together, and Rey figures out what they need to do next.


	9. In Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've connected the dots" "You didn't connect shit" 'I've CONNECTED THEM"

_"Sometimes, accepting help is harder than offering it."_

The three of them were silent as they walked back to the Falcon, winding through the dense mushroom forest, pushing aside hanging vines. Rey’s eyes remained hazy, fixed on some far off point ahead of her as Finn lead her by her hand, Rose close on her other side. She should have felt safe, guarded as she was by the two of them, but their presence was smothering rather than comforting.

Their silent concern was palpable enough that it nearly brought Rey to tears yet again. But she was past crying at that point. 

Distantly she acknowledged that Finn and Rose had accomplished the feat of piloting she hadn’t been able to; steering a ship into the underbelly of the Wellspring. It was a harrowing testament to how far she had been slipping. Rey had prided herself, privately, on her flying ability, and now she felt stripped of that as well.

When they arrived at the Falcon, Finn tried to usher her inside, but Rose put a hand on his arm,

“This place isn’t good for ships. I need Rey out here to help with repairs.”

Finn’s voice was low in an attempt for subtlety, “Give her a _break_ , Rose. She needs to-”

“It’s fine.” Rey interrupted, and although she could see he’d rather protest, Finn backed off and sat at the base of the ramp while the two women worked on the ship. It was frustrating to be handled so delicately when she felt so utterly jagged.

Between Rose’s technical expertise and Rey’s natural talent, they made quick work of repairing the damaged shield and power generators. They worked silently, only speaking when necessary, and Rey was glad for it. She didn't think she could handle a heartfelt talk right then, even one disguised behind idle chatter. 

Rey flinched away from Rose's complimentary pat on the back when the generators had finally started operating again, opting instead to hop off the side of the Falcon and go inside. Succeeding in the repairs was a cold comfort to her earlier mistakes.

Once she got to the cockpit, Rey dropped her pack and moved to sit in the pilot’s chair, but Rose stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Finn was right. You need to rest,” She gave Rey an encouraging squeeze, “We’ve got this. Go get some sleep.”

With the memory of her recent failures weighing on her, Rey didn’t argue. Finn stopped her in the hall with a crushing, fleeting hug that she barely felt. And then she was in her quarters. Alone.

Rey didn’t take off her cloak or her shoes before she collapsed onto the bed and into the darkness of Exegol.

This time, she didn’t look for Ben, simply sitting on the stone floor until she heard frantic steps rushing towards her.

“Rey!” Ben exclaimed, kneeling in front of her, gripping her shoulders, “Rey? What’s wrong?”

Rey stared at his bent knees, at the torn and bloody fabric covering them. She didn’t feel like she had the strength to look into his eyes. A gentle hand on her jaw made her clench her eyes shut against the tears she could feel rising.

“Sweetheart, tell me what happened?” Ben’s voice was increasingly nervous, and Rey could feel his concern beginning to turn frantic. She forced out an answer,

“I couldn’t do it.” 

The large hand on her jaw moved to envelop her cheek, thumb stroking softly, “Couldn’t do what?” She could tell that Ben’s calming gesture was in equal parts for her and himself.

Rey took a deep breath that rattled her chest with its bitterness, “ _Any_ of it,” She snapped, finally looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes, “I couldn’t stay in control, I couldn’t land the _fucking_ ship, I couldn’t find answers, I _couldn’t find YOU!_ ” Her voice had raised progressively to a scream, and she tore her face away from Ben’s hand and stood, clutching at her head.

“ _Rey_ ,” Ben began, and the wealth of sorrow in just her name was the final crack that broke her down into racking sobs. Rey felt his arms go around her, holding her desperately close, “Rey-”

“I’m _sorry!_ ” She cried into his chest.

“ _No_ , don’t blame yourself!” His hands were stroking the length of her back, running through her hair, “You’ve come so far-”

“But I still h-haven’t-” Rey’s sobs hiccuped in her throat as she tried to speak through them.

“Sweetheart you’ve been _so_ strong,” Ben tucked his chin over her head, practically crushing her to him, “For such a long time. Let me help you. Just-” He pulled back to look into her face, beseeching, “-Tell me what happened. All of it,”

Rey nodded into his neck, her quiet “ _okay_ ” muffled by his shirt.

“And then rest, and I’ll figure it out, okay?”

She sniffled and nodded again, too exhausted to argue. Too relieved. Rey had never had this before. She’d never had someone to share her burdens with, never let anyone close enough to try. Even to her friends, whom she cared for deeply, she was staunchly independent, refusing to rely on them more than absolutely necessary.

Having grown up on Jakku, with only herself to keep her alive, Rey had feared little more than she did needing another person. What she felt for Ben now was that Rey’s _nightmare_.

As she recounted what had happened in the Wellspring, Rey found herself stuck with a pang of sinking guilt. She trusted Ben to help her, but not her friends.

Deep down, she knew it was the surety of their bond that made her comfortable sharing her burdens with her other half, but even without something profoundly _cosmic_ bringing them together, Rey loved her friends. She should be able to trust them with her pain, and yet she’d been unable to do so. 

She promised herself she'd apologize when she woke up.

“The priestess called you _what?_ ” Ben snarled, interrupting her explanation and her train of thought. Rey drew her knees in tighter, curling herself into an even smaller ball on his lap.

“ _Damaging_.” She whispered, and Ben’s arms tightened around her reflexively. She could feel his anger bubbling to the surface, and in some backward way, it comforted her. 

“That’s-” Ben shook his head, clearly trying to curb the impulse to shout, “ _Cruel_. Why would she…”

Rey shrugged dejectedly, “She didn’t like me?”

“No, no, there was a reason.” Ben’s anger had smoldered into a different intensity. Rey tilted her head back to stare up at him quizzically. He was trying to figure something out. She could see it on his face, and Rey remembered again that this man was, at his heart, a scholar. It was almost charming, seeing him presented with a problem to solve.

Ben continued, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Force, it’s that all cruelties have their purpose.” 

“Sounds shitty.”

“It is,” Ben replied, but she could tell he was distracted by whatever puzzle he’d discovered.

She had to admit, the way the Priestess had phrased it… was strange. The wording irked her, but something made her stop to consider what she'd said more carefully...

With her mind no longer clouded by pain, Rey slowly realized that Serenity was _right_.

She’d asked how to fix herself- her shattered abilities, her failing grasp of the Force, and Serenity had told her that she wasn’t broken, but _breaking-_ actively breaking the Force around her.

Rey’s hand shot out to grasp Ben’s arm.

“Rey?”

She scooted off his lap to kneel in front of his crossed legs, “ _Ben_ ,” Rey began excitedly, “There’s something wrong with me!”

Ben looked at her, baffled, “Uh.”

“My Force signature, Ben it’s off-” “-We already _knew_ that-” “-Because the bond was _damaged_.” 

Something began to dawn on his face, “‘ _A power like life itself_ ’,” He quoted, and Rey nodded furiously.

“When someone- especially a Force user- dies, it leaves a mark on the Cosmic Force." She explained while Ben nodded along, already knowing this, "Ben when we were separated it made a mark- that’s what this is!”

Ben raked a hand through his hair, eyes wide, “It left a tear in the Force- around you- _us_.”

Rey grabbed his cheeks, “And that’s how I’ll find you!”

They sat there in stunned silence for a moment, before Ben pulled back slightly.

“How?”

Rey winced, having gotten ahead of herself, “I don’t know. But Ben, you leave a mark on the galaxy, as I do. There _has_ to be a way to find it.”

He nodded, accepting her hope as his own, and took her hand in his.

"We're going to figure this out."

* * *

Finn was pretty sure this didn’t count as snooping. Rey had given him free-reign over the Jedi texts in the past, and really he was just desperate to find a way to help her. 

He wanted his best friend back. The Rey he knew had never looked so _defeated_.

Something in her was hurt, _bleeding_ , and Finn knew it- had realized it as he’d woven through the skeletal ships and swaths of death that littered the Deep Core.

It was like she held one of those deaths within her, and the pressure of it tore at the Force around her.

Pouring through the dense mythology of the _Rammahgon_ had proven fruitless, so Finn had turned to the unnamed academic text for clearer information, and it was there he found a name for what ailed his friend.

A wound in the Force.

It was described as a tear in the fabric of the Force, most often caused by a great loss of life or galactic tragedy. The text sited _Malachor V_ , which Finn had never heard of, but gathered to be some war-torn planet that had once flourished and now lay decrepit.

Individual deaths caused ripples in the Force, yes, but _wounds_ required a loss far more intense.

It was easy to put together that Kylo Ren’s death was the cause of Rey’s wound, now that he knew about their bond.

A _dyad_.

Finn frowned down at the worn pages. Nothing like that was mentioned in the texts, not by name at least. Rey probably knew more...

“How’s the research coming?” Rose’s voice broke him out of his thoughts.

Finn glanced up at her from where he sat in the pilot’s chair. They were out of the more dangerous part of the nebulae, and so Rose had been steering from the copilot’s seat as Finn looked through the texts. She was a decent flier, but Finn had felt more comfortable flying in the denser parts of the Deep Core since he at least had the Force to cushion any mistakes.

“I know what’s wrong with Rey.” Rose’s brows shot up, “Well, in theory,” Finn glanced back down at the texts, “It’s called a wound in the Force. Usually caused by many deaths in one place… for Rey, I guess that was Kylo Ren.”

Rose frowned, “Just his death caused all this?”

“I guess it’s because of their bond,” Finn sighed, “I just wish I could find more information on dyads...”

“Let’s ask Rey when she wakes up…” Something lit up in her eyes, “Maybe if we have good news by the time she does she’ll feel better- is there any information on ways to find Kylo?”

Finn looked over at Rose incredulously, “Don’t you think if there was some sort of _Force-tracker_ Rey would have found it already?”

“Rey doesn’t know everything. And she wasn’t looking for a map before, she was looking for the Wellspring.”

Finn pursed his lips, “Technically we don’t know that she wasn’t looking for a map, she didn’t exactly start out with the truth-” Something clicked in the back of his mind, “ _Wait_. A map.”

“Uh, yeah?” Rose questioned, leaning over to him as Finn began hurriedly flipping through the pages of _Aionomica I_.

“Rose you _genius_. A map!”

“I mean I’m not going to deny that-”

“Here!” Finn shouted, pointing to a paragraph in the center of the page he’d found, “‘ _The Living Force is a map of souls throughout the Galaxy._ ’” He read aloud, “A _map_ , Rose!”

She nodded slowly, not entirely understanding why he was so excited.

But Finn had already grabbed the _Rammahgon_ , flipping through it until he came to the page he was searching for.

“‘ _There exists a twisted ribbon connecting all of the Living Force, mapping reality through connecting vergences_ ,’” Finn looked up at Rose, eyes bright.

Rose stared at him, bewildered, “Finn that sounds like a nonsense metaphor.”

“It does, _but!_ ” He holds up one finger, prompting her to wait as he grabbed the unnamed text, sifting through to a page covered in branching diagrams. He pointed enthusiastically to a note in the margins, “Vergences are mentioned again _here_ , defined as a concentration in the Force around a person or a place- a _person_ , Rose!”

Her eyes widened, “Rey?”

“Not just her. Listen, one death wouldn’t cause a wound in the Force, but the breaking of a bond, the disruption of a vergence _would_.”

Rose leaned back in her chair, absorbing Finn’s theory, “That’s… that would make sense, yeah.”

Finn continued, “And if they are a vergence, they’re connected through _this_ ,” He pointed to the diagram, “The Vergence Scatter. It’s known by a few other names but it definitely looks like what the _Rammahgon_ was talking about- a map of the Living Force.”

“This could just be a series of coincidences…” 

“Which is why we need to talk to Rey.” Finn agreed and started to stand. Rose halted him with a hand,

“Maybe we should wait until she’s had a chance to rest.” She looked up at him with concern weighing on her expression. Finn sighed and sat back down. As much as he wanted to wake Rey up and tell her animatedly about his theory, Rose was right. Rey was hurting and probably hadn't slept since she left them, one standard day ago.

And they were both deeply worried about her.

She needed a break. He and Rose could handle docking the ship on Duro, a planet relatively near to the Deep Core, and when Rey woke up they’d fill her in.

 _This time_ , Finn thought with fierce resolve, _we’re going to figure this out together_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I'm sorry for the delay on this one, I've got quite a few projects for school right now, and that's the excuse you're getting.  
> I struggled with this whole chapter tbh. I'm trying to make them discover things naturally, and that means it will take a while for the whole picture to be put together. One piece at a time guys, we're getting there!  
> Next up: friendship conversations! And the next phase of the space roadtrip commences!


	10. Making Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, it's all coming together...

" _Adaptation is the key to survival._ "

When Rey burst into the cockpit hours later, Finn immediately jumped to his feet and the two of them began explaining their theories at the same time. Rose stared back and forth for a moment, trying and failing to get a word in until she shouted the both of them down and demanded they go one at a time.

Now, Finn paced the length of the cockpit, trailed by an enthusiastic D-0, while Rey sat cross-legged in the pilot’s seat, glaring down at the Jedi texts in her lap. Rose had long since abandoned them to get some sleep, asking only that they stop to eat at some point. 

“ _Force_ , why is there nothing in here of any _use!_ ” Rey exclaimed, throwing her hands up.

“Well, I don’t figure many people have completely misplaced the _other half of their soul_ before, Rey,” Finn replied, only mostly joking. 

Rey snapped the text shut and D-0 squeaked an “ _Uh oh!_ ” before skittered out of the cockpit.

Rey reminded herself patiently that throwing a sacred text at Finn would be unproductive and probably sacrilegious. 

“I just wish I could…” She jerked her head up and slapped a hand to her forehead, “ _Oh_ , I’m an idiot! I _can_ just ask!”

Finn halted, confused, and spun around to face Rey before realization dawned on his face, “You mean-”

Rey nodded and reached out a hand, “You know how to do this?”

Finn clasped her hand, moving to sit on the armrest of the copilot’s seat, “Vaguely.” He looked a little sheepish, “When I mentioned meditation before- I did some research once I figured out I had the Force.”

Rey felt a stab of hurt. Finn could have just asked her back then- but what right did she have to fault him for keeping secrets?

“Alright,” She began, closing her eyes, “Just focus on me. I’ve spoken to them before, I’ll guide us.”

Together, Rey and Finn reached into the Cosmic Force, calling out to the Jedi who’d become one with it. For a long moment, nothing happened.

And then a presence, an awareness surrounded them-

“Finally asking for help?”

Rey and Finn opened their eyes, turning to look at Luke Skywalker, who stood in the cockpit of the Falcon, ethereal and serene but for the wry smile on his face.

Finn whooped enthusiastically and held up a hand that Rey belatedly realized she was meant to high-five. Her friend’s excitement at the novelty of this experience was a comfort- it had been too long since she’d thought of the Force as something to take joy in. She slapped his offered hand with her own without looking, her eyes trained on Luke’s amused expression.

“Master Skywalker,”

Luke rolled his eyes, “Three lessons doesn’t make me your Master, Rey from nowhere.”

Finn nudged her, “At least you _got_ lessons.”

“Luke,” Rey started again, “We have questions.”

Luke leaned back against the wall of the cockpit, “So do _I_ , actually. Mind explaining why you were wandering through the _Wellspring_ , of all places? I don’t think an outsider has set foot there since Yoda did.”

Rey and Finn glanced at each other, bemused, and Luke shook his head with a sigh, “Kids, no respect for history.”

Rey pursed her lips. She’d forgotten how frustrating Skywalker could be, “I’m looking for Ben.”

Luke’s eyebrows shot up, “That’s a relief, I’ve been _barely_ restraining Leia from breaking all the cosmic rules and shouting at you all to find her son.”

“There are _rules?_ ” Finn asked, but Rey hurried on,

“I would take the time to be pissed, but we need _answers_ , Luke. _How do I find him_.” She demanded, well past the point of asking.

“Did I not just explain that there are rules?”

“ _Fine_ .” Rey snarled, “Then give me cryptic hints! At least that would be _something!_ ”

Finn put a placating hand on her shoulder and Rey restrained herself from furiously shrugging him off. The comfort the touch provided made her want to cry, but she’d promised herself she would accept help where she needed it.

Luke leveled her with a serious look, very different from his previously sarcastic mannerisms.

“I can’t tell you much. But you’re close, Rey.” Luke nodded to the man beside her, “And Finn, the Force is pushing you in the right direction, trust your instincts.” He sighed, and Rey caught a glimpse of the _guilt_ , the man who’d admitted to failing his nephew, to driving him into the dark, “It was never meant to go this way. You’re on the path to setting things right.”

Rey stood, desperation lining her hunched shoulders, “But I don’t know what to do _next_ , there has to be something you can tell us!”

Luke glanced down for a moment, appearing weary despite his luminous and eternal state of being.

“Before Sheev Palpatine fell for the first time before the Republic was perverted into the Empire, Darth Sidious took an interest in the Living Force… 

“Who?” Finn and Rey asked at the same time.

“ _Palpatine_ ,” Luke amended, “He was probably trying to find a way to cheat death.”

He slid his hands into the sleeves of his robe, “I only know this because of the records he kept- that Leia recovered through some political wrangling after the fall of the Empire. We were looking for failsafes, any hint of a backup plan that could come back to bite us in the ass.” He grimaced, “Apparently we didn’t look hard enough- that’s beside the point. Palpatine found something, something known to the Jedi of old by many names. The Vergence Scatter,”

Finn looked up sharply.

“...The World Between Worlds. He called it the _Netherworld of Unbeing_. And he was trying to use it for something.”

“Wait!” Finn exclaimed, grabbing the _Rammahgon_ from where it sat on the control panel, and flipping rapidly through the pages.

Rey leaned in, watching as Finn traced his fingers over the pages until he came to a stop at an unassuming passage. Luke observed the two of them with a growing smile.

“‘ _A twisted ribbon connecting all of the Living Force,”_ Finn read aloud, _“mapping reality through connecting vergences.’”_ Rey’s eyes widened and her hand shot out to grasp his arm.

“That’s what you were talking about, the-”

“-Vergence Scatter! There’s more here, ‘ _Transit to any point of the galaxy is made possible through the Living Force,_ ’”

“ _Bingo,_ ” Luke whispered.

Rey shook her head, “That doesn’t tell us how to find Ben. I mean teleportation is great, but...”

“Is that how Palpatine controlled things from Exegol?” Finn asked, handing the _Rammahgon_ to Rey, who cradled it close to her chest.

Luke shrugged, “Probably.”

“But Rey’s right, this doesn’t help us…”

“All I can do is point you in the right direction.” Luke tilted his head, “Palpatine didn’t trust normal archives for what he discovered. But don’t be mistaken, he _kept_ records.”

“There’s more.” Rey said, clutching the sacred text like a lifeline, “Where?”

“Where was the seat of Palpatine’s power?”

She shut her eyes, suddenly very tired, “The Death Star.”

“And now you know.” Luke smiled and faded from view.

Rey’s knees buckled, and she canted to one side, barely catching herself on the back of the pilot’s seat. Finn was hovering over her side in the next instant, concern marring his face.

“Rey?”

She held a hand up and shook her head slightly, “I just need a moment.”

Rey reluctantly allowed Finn to support her. It dawned on her gradually that this sudden fit of weakness was the effect of the feat of Force concentration she and Finn had just achieved… and of the Wound between her and Ben.

“It’s getting worse,” Finn remarked grimly.

“I’m fine.” Rey bit out, straightening shakily. 

When her friend placed an arm around her shoulders, Rey leaned into him.

* * *

As it turned out, landing on Duro was far more complicated than was worth the trouble. With much of the planet’s surface uninhabitable, or overtaken by industrial growth, docking bays were few and far between- and expensive. Finn and Rey settled on the orbital city of New Tayana. While not a pleasant place, it was solid ground and had a fueling station that would do well enough for their purposes.

Rose, having woken up as they landed, insisted on going out to stretch her legs with Finn while he went and paid for their fuel. Rey offered to come along (for “quality assurance”, she joked dully) but after she saw Finn hesitate to answer, and caught Rose’s eye, an increasingly rare grin crossed her face and she promised to watch the ship with D-0.

The entire exchange did nothing for Finn’s nerves.

“Y’know when I agreed to come on this mission, I didn’t anticipate that we’d be touring the literal _worst_ places in the galaxy.” Finn sighed, surveying the unfortunate state of the fueling station they’d just come out of. The attendant inside had charged them a ridiculous amount for what was likely subpar fuel, but seeing the state of things, Rose had agreed immediately, and Finn hadn’t had the heart to argue. It wasn’t as though they were strapped for credits.

“Trust me, this is not one of _the worst_ places,” Rose replied drily, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket. Her cheeks and nose were ruddy from the cold, and her hair was falling from the confines of her hastily-scraped-back ponytail. There was an errant grease stain on her brow. She was lovely.

“I would count our next stop as a solid _pretty bad_ on that list.” He replied, gaze lingering on her a second too long. _I can’t believe I kissed her_. 

_I can’t believe I haven’t kissed her_ again.

“From what I’ve heard, Kef Bir is hardly a wasteland.”

Finn grimaced, “In terms of the Force, it might as well be.”

Rose slowed her pace beside him and glanced over questioningly.

“The Death Star has been the center of many atrocities… that kind of thing doesn’t decay.” Finn looked out at the industrial horizon, “When Rey, Poe and I found the ruins, I could feel the things that happened there. All of the death and pain.” He shuddered, “I’m not looking forward to going back.”

Rose tucked her small hand into the crook of his elbow, and Finn startled slightly, “Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have the Force,” She admitted, “Especially seeing what it’s done to Rey.”

Finn looked up at the Falcon coming into view ahead of them, “I wish there was more I could do to help.”

Rose squeezed his arm, “You’re helping be being here, Finn.”

“I don’t just mean moral support- Rose, she nearly _fainted_ earlier.” The woman walking beside him turned in surprise and concern, “Using the Force is taking a physical toll on her, but we’re going to need her if we’re going to… complete this mission.” Finn still stumbled over admitting the man they were trying to rescue was _Kylo Ren_. However much Rey insisted he was Ben now… it didn’t _matter_ what name he went by. Rey’s _Ben_ was the same man who’d split Finn’s back down the center, the same man who’d torn information from Poe’s mind, who’d taken Rey. Who had nearly doomed the galaxy he’d lorded over.

The two of them stepped onto the ramp of the Falcon, and Finn’s heart sunk when Rose’s hand slipped from his arm- only for it to leap when she reached down and grabbed his own hand. His eyes widened slightly and he couldn’t repress the silly grin that rose on his face. Finn squeezed Rose’s hand.

“I’m gonna ask Rey about making a stop at Takodana to see Maz,” He continued, pulling Rose up the ramp beside him, and through the hatch as it opened. Rey had likely sensed their approach. Sometimes the Force came in handy, despite its complications. “She might be able to help her with… all of it.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

Rose shut the hatch behind them, turning to head towards the cockpit- only to trip over D-0 as they skittered into the room. She didn’t have time to cry out before Finn had frozen her midair, and then looped an arm around her middle to straighten her up. Rose huffed out an embarrassed breath and chuckled reflexively at Finn’s arm around her waist. 

He was reminded of the flustered awkwardness of their first interaction, that despite the way she’d snapped coldly into the duty of a Resistance fighter moments later, Rose could be so endearingly graceless. It was a part of her many contradictions. Kind and fierce, tactless and cunning, waspish and gentle.

The fondness that bloomed in his chest was a physical pain, and Finn struggled to tamp it down. When Rose looked up at him with mirthful eyes and a hesitant smile, he considered that he might not need to. That maybe this new vulnerability was safe with her. Was that love? Letting someone into the hollow space of your chest, knowing that they could royally fuck it up, and trusting them anyway?

It was kind of nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh... sorry about how late this is? Things may be a little sporadic update-wise in the future. It's been a hectic few weeks, what with The Plague and everything. I might end up having more time to write, actually, though I'm not looking forward to having my art classes online. It's funny to think that this fic will be around long after coronavirus, so hey if you're looking at this years in the future, I hope society didn't collapse or anything!  
> ANYWAY, next time... MAZ KANATA!!! I'm so excited to write her! Also, I'm gonna try and speed things up, no more taking two chapters to get to each different location. We'll see how that works out once I start writing... I didn't think it would take this long to get to and past the Wellspring, yet here we are!  
> I hope y'all stay healthy!


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